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CHRISTIAN RADICALISM, 



BY 



WILLIAM WITHINGTON. 



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PRINTED BY PERKINS & MARVIN. 



1836 







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Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1836, 

By William Withington, 
in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Massachusetts. 



PREFACE. 



The following work is partly original, and partly con- 
sisting of articles before published. It seemed necessary 
to republish these, in order to present fully the author's 
views ; or else, to write anew the substance in another 
form ; in which no important advantages were seen. 

Some may think, I have discordantly mingled theolog- 
ical doctrines with other things. I can only say in self- 
defence, that 1 have endeavored to state what seemed to 
me truth, according to its connections in my own mind — ■ 
to present my conclusions according to the trains of 
thought, by which I had arrived at them. The truth 
revealed by God in his word, and the truth disclosed by 
man's conduct as created for this life, seem to me to 
reflect the clearest light on each other : and I am con- 
scious, that I should have apprehended neither w 7 ith my 
present satisfaction, but for the help derived from a com- 
parison of the two. I have endeavored to read the word 
of God, and to mark human conduct, for myself, unham- 
pered by systems of divinity, or systems of philosophy. I 
have expressed my own sentiments fearlessly ; without 
expecting to find any party ready to respond to them 
fully. Unless therefore the work should fall into the 
hands of an isolated reader, here and there, prepared for 
this ; in consideration of what the reader may find to 
approve, I must crave his indulgence for the rest. I 
claim no peculiar credit for venturing upon such a work. 
If anywise fitted for it, it is because few, w T ho have de- 
voted much attention to passing objects of interest, have 
been kept less connected with, or less pledged to, any 
sect, party, or denomination ; and this by that overruling 



IV 

Divinity, which so often thwarts our wills, to shape our 
rough-hewn ends. 

After all, my views of human conduct coincide with 
those, which the shrewdest observers have adopted inde- 
pendently of revelation. He who can talk with Brown 
of human virtue, must be acute only for the speculations 
of the closet. I know not, whether governor McDuffie 
be a very devout student of the Scriptures : for the fol- 
lowing sentiment in his inaugural speech, might either 
have been learned from them, or from general history and 
observation. 

" However melancholy the fact may be, all history is 
but a bloody testimony to establish it, that no community 
of men on the face of the earth, in any age, or under any 
dispensation, political or religious, ever has been governed 
by justice in its negotiations or conflicts with other states. 
No, gentlemen, it is not justice and magnanimity, but in- 
terest and ambition — dignified and disguised under the 
name of State Policy — that ever has governed, and ever 
will govern masses of men, acting as political communi- 
ties." 

His excellency's design did not lead him to speak of 
" masses of men," otherwise than as " political communi- 
ties." But neither reason nor observation demands the 
restriction of the sentiment to masses acting in that ca- 
pacity. His anticipation that it " ever will " be so, 
seems to justify the surmise, that he came to his conclu- 
sion more from the study of secular history, than of that 
volume, which declares, that " a king shall reign in 
righteousness, and princes shall rule in judgment." 

The fact of this supreme preponderance of the selfish 
principle is quite consistent with another, that men gen- 
erally are not conscious of designedly sacrificing all the 
best interests of others to their own selfish ends. The 
consciousness of so doing is too painful : they therefore 
generally contrive, but too successfully, to hide the plain 
truth from themselves. But though selfishness may 
generally operate first to pervert the judgment, it is not 
the less a reality. Did men love their neighbor as them- 
selves, it would not be so. For the want of such love, 
and the consequences, they are fully responsible. Only 
in this negative or constructive sense, I suppose, did the 



apostle mean to characterize men, till born again, as 
" hateful and hating one another." 

But here, men who agree upon the fact, differ as to the 
moral construction. They who will not admit the perfect 
reasonableness of God's demand to be loved with all the 
heart, and strength, and mind, and that man love" his 
neighbor as himself, plead the incompetence of human 
infirmity to exercise fully such love, in mitigation of the 
sentence of condemnation. In accordance with this, 
there is a vast deal of loose popular reasoning, as if, so 
far as the conduct of men may be certainly calculated on, 
so far as it may be resolved into laws invariably acting — 
they are not perfect moral agents — they cannot rightly 
be held strictly accountable for every deviation from the 
perfect law of God. But this resolving of transgression 
into the excusable necessity imposed by our constitution 
and circumstances, is really to throw the guilt upon God ; 
unless I have exerted my closest powers of analysis in 
vain. 

May the time soon come, when it shall be generally 
and fully admitted, that the word of God contains the 
soundest and most practical philosophy of the human 
mind ; how miserably short-sighted selfishness overlooks 
the truest interest and the truest honor,* in its groveling 
search and eager grasp ; and how miserably we consult 
for the dignity of human nature, when we strive to exalt 
it, by evading the charges, which our Sovereign brings 
against us. This strife has ever resulted in our worse 
degradation. We accordingly see, that the men most 
actively and ardently engaged in vindicating man's true 
dignity, have been the men, who most scorned to glory 
in aught, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ — who 
most fully admitted the conclusion, that if one died for all, 
then were all dead. Such have been the principles of 
the leading spirits in the capital revolutions for rescuing 

* " He said to me after his return from abroad, that he had at some 
periods indulged hopes of such honors as our profession could afford, 
but that he had totally renounced all such hopes and wishes for that, 
-which he deemed of much more importance, the being truly useful 
to his fellow men." — Memoir of James Jackson, Jr., M. D. 

Alas ! that in any profession the highest honors should be consid- 
ered as so distinct from the being truly useful to one's fellow men. 



VI 

mankind from superstition and bondage. And however 
one may speculate, he hardly doubts, that such are the 
principles of him, who, to vindicate man's true dignity, 
forsakes kindred and home, and braves a polar winter, or 
a tropical sun, to raise intellects debased almost below 
the -brutes to the dignity of reasonable, thinking, and 
adoring beings. 

I must now request the reader to adopt practically the 
following sentiment from the Quarterly Christian Spec- 
tator, Vol. VI. p. 546. " He who loves truth will not be 
fastidious of the quarter whence it comes : and though it 
may seem contrary to his prejudices, though it may in- 
fringe on some venerable form of belief, or be opposed to 
much that passes for knowledge in the world; yet it will 
be welcomed, and its influence felt and allowed on the 
judgment and the life." 

The remarks which follow in the Spectator, on the 
connection between holiness and independence of thought 
and advancement in truth, are weil worthy of every 
reader's consideration. 

I have discussed topics calculated to be exciting. Had 
it been my object to rouse popular indignation against 
men interested in the perpetuation of old abuses, and to 
puff myself into notoriety as a popular leader, I see abun- 
dant evidence, how easy would have been the under- 
taking: and this is only saying, that whoever undertakes 
to raise the bad passions of men, has a very easy task 
before him. If I have not less, I have not such ambition. 
I have been ambitious, (if such be the term,) to arouse 
public sentiment to demand some radical reforms, without 
cherishing viler passions than a sincere desire to see those 
by education the adherents of conservative principles 
brought into circumstances safer to their moral principles, 
and better for their ultimate welfare, even for this life. 
Whether I have made the attempt too early, remains to 
be seen. For the credit of the age, I hope not. As to 
my own credit in the attempt, I can cheerfully appeal to 
the ultimate decision of an intelligent people ; and still 
more cheerfully to that tribunal, whither we are all 
hastening. 



CHRISTIAN RADICALISM. 



BODY AND SOUL. 

No. I. 



One principle pervading the institutions of 
Moses is, that there is an intimate connection 
between body and soul — that a foundation for 
moral and religious improvement should be laid 
in a careful attention to the constitution of the 
human body, and the external agents affecting 
it. I believe, that a vast number of his regula- 
tions, which generally have been treated as ca- 
pricious and frivolous, or more piously resolved 
into the good pleasure and inexplicable will of 
the Deity, or with more show of reason, referred 
simply to the necessity of establishing some 
arbitrary distinctions between the people of God 
and the surrounding idolatrous nations, have 
their foundation in the soundest philosophy of 

2 



10 

human nature. I propose to show in a few in- 
stances, how institutions, generally considered 
as of temporary or inexplicable expediency, rest 
upon reasons as lasting as the constitution of 
nature. 

Moses forbade to eat blood or fat. Nothing 
need be said of the former. As to the latter, it 
is found that disease in an animal affects the 
fat before the lean. The former may be dis- 
eased, while the latter may be eaten with com- 
parative impunity. The regulation, too, was 
calculated to discourage the artificial and vicious 
manner of fattening animals now almost univer- 
sally practised. Where such a regulation was 
in force, people would be little likely to stall- 
fatten their cattle on a fermented mixture of 
chopped vegetables and meal, or have recourse 
to the various expedients for creating an artifi- 
cial appetite, in order to load the animal speedily 
with artificial fat. Animals thus fattened are in 
fact diseased : and the owner calculates his 
immediate interest closely enough, to kill them, 
before sudden death intervenes, or the false ap- 
pearance of good-liking gives place to emaciation. 
The penalty, which is to follow, for departing 
from the organic law, is not thought of; though 
it is matter of common observation, that the 



11 

flesh of wild animals, which live after nature's 
intention, is of much easier digestion than that 
of our domestic cattle — an observation, which 
might ha^e led sooner to the inquiry, what in- 
juries we are bringing on ourselves, through the 
vicious manner in which we are treating them. 

The prohibition of fat almost includes that of 
swine's flesh. A further reason might be found 
in the animal's filthy habits of feeding. Fed as 
these creatures generally are among us, on 
animal and vegetable substances in a state of 
incipient putrefaction, their flesh must be any 
thing but wholesome, and, I believe, is a fruitful 
source of scrofula, and other diseases. In 
warmer climates the consequences must be still 
worse, as in leprosy, of which, I believe, it is the 
most common cause. 

The great amount of holy-day season, en- 
joined on the Israelites through Moses, doubtless 
seems to be a great drawback on the great busi- 
ness of life, to those political economists, who 
(in the language of Combe) " appear to conceive 
man's chief end, in Britain at least, to be to 
manufacture hard-ware, broad-cloths, and cotton 
goods for the use of the whole world, and to 
store up wealth." # But the multiplication of 

* Lectures on Popular Education, p. 69. 



12 

holy-day seasons tended to save the Israelites 
from the very evil, which Combe so deeply la- 
ments in his countrymen — " the excessive culti- 
vation of Acquisitiveness." It tended to secure 
the good, which this philosopher and his associ- 
ates are aiming at, in urging the necessity of 
gradually reducing the time of work for the labor- 
ing classes to about eight hours per day; that 
they may have sufficient time for intellectual 
and moral improvement, that the whole man 
may be duly cultivated. At a time when books 
were scarce, and lyceums and lectureships 
not the order of the day, the assembling of the 
whole country three times a year at the great 
festivals, afforded substantially the advantage of 
these modern improvements : it afforded oppor- 
tunity to compare ideas with men of other pro- 
vinces, and to improve by an interchange of 
knowledge. How different must the populace 
of such a country have been, from the tasked 
and confined operatives and peasantry of Eu- 
rope ! 

Again, it was enjoined in the Mosaic institu- 
tions, that the land should rest every seventh 
year. In addition to what has just been stated, 
I venture to say, after paying not a very little 
attention to agriculture both theoretically and 



13 

practically, that land ought to rest this propor- 
tion of time : that by forcing a crop each year 
through a long series, we exhaust and disease 
the soil : the produce on the whole is less, and 
becomes ill-fitted for food of man or beast. 
During the fallow year, time might have been 
taken to free the land from various noxious 
weeds. Or it might have been trenched, in 
order to bring uppermost a new portion of the 
soil for cultivation the coming six years : and 
there is some testimony to prove, that such was 
actually the practice of the Jews. 

I can select only a few specimens bearing 
upon the point in question. I have a strong 
suspicion, that a thorough examination of the 
subject would satisfy every fair inquirer, that 
Moses could have so well anticipated views, to 
which the most practical inquirers of this late 
age are coming, only through divine inspiration. 
He did not prescribe morality and religion alone. 
He knew that it was in vain to look for manly 
piety, honorable to God, among a people who 
neglected to observe in due proportion the 
physical and organic, as well as the moral laws. 
He encouraged the cultivation of intellect, and 
of the social affections. In reward for observing 
his statutes, God promised to bless their bread 

2* 



14 

and their water, and to take sickness away from 
the midst of them. (Ex. xxiii. 25.) There is 
no need of supposing, this was to be done by 
any extraordinary providence : we may consider 
it as the natural result of due attention to clean- 
liness, proper cultivation of the soil, judiciously 
interchanging labor with recreation and cultiva- 
tion of the intellectual and moral faculties ; of 
not pursuing wealth as life's whole aim and end ; 
of being temperate in all things. I intend to 
pursue further the thoughts now suggested. 



BODY AND SOUL. 
No. II. 

We boast of the improvements of the age — of 
the excellence of our civil and domestic institu- 
tions. Let us just consider some particulars, in 
which we profess to have improved on the 
wisdom of former ages. 

Our agriculturalists exact of the soil an annual 
return. It is in vain, that God has so consti- 
tuted it as to require septennially or thereabouts 



15 

a year of rest. Acquisitiveness will not be so 
restrained. Artificial manuring must supply 
what God intended should be effected by other 
means. Mark the cattle feeding. How luxu- 
riant and beautiful to the eye is the herbage, 
where their manure is dropped. But the animals 
avoid it, and crop again and again the scanty 
grass which intervenes. Instinct teaches them, 
that the grass so fair to the eye is bad for the 
stomach. But man goes right counter to the 
important lesson thus taught him. He covers 
his whole field with a top-dressing of rank ma- 
nure ; and compels his cattle to eat the grass 
and hay thus grown, or starve. His milch cows 
escape with comparative impunity : for nature 
has provided, that noxious particles taken in the 
food shall be secreted by the milk-vessels : and 
the heaviest part of the penalty falls on those, 
who feed on the milk, or on the butter and 
cheese manufactured out of it. 

I venture to affirm, that around our cities 
especially, by far the largest part of the land is 
diseased by forced cropping, over manuring, and 
noxious weeds. But it would require a volume 
to treat of bad husbandry as a source of disease. 
Perhaps we should trace the evil back to the 
ceasing to yield to agriculture that pre-eminence 



16 

among the arts, which God indicated in appoint- 
ing Adam to till the ground, and in constituting 
his chosen people so eminently an agricultural 
people. Now, if one son in the family is sup- 
posed to give indications of superior parts, it is 
thought a pity to retain him on the farm ; he is 
sent to the counting-room ; and it seems to me, 
as if the conscious earth resented the indignity. 
We may expect wiser conduct, when it shall be 
better understood, how much agriculture requires 
to be reformed by the light of science truly so 
called. 

Again, the wisdom of the world thinks to have 
relieved itself of a great burden, in throwing off 
the impositions of priestcraft. So indignantly 
does it resent the waste of time spent for honor- 
ing the Lord, that it will not yield him one day 
in seven. In most parts of our country, stages 
and steam-boats make no distinction between 
the days of the week ; and worldly business and 
recreations are as rife on the Lord's day, as on 
others. 

So in fancied freedom, men smile at the tithed 
dupes of other days, and at those who voluntarily 
tax themselves for the support of the gospel. A 
scanty portion of the support allotted to the 
Levites is allowed even to the teachers of litera- 



17 

ture and science. Let us just glance at the 
evils we are suffering for departing so widely 
from the spirit of the social institutions, which 
God once granted to his people. 

The average duration of human life among 
the Israelites, seems to have been reckoned at 
about seventy years : (Ps. xc. 10.) With us it 
is only about half that sum, or something less. 
Their diseases were few and simple ; such as 
hardly required a distinct profession for their 
cure. With us they have been multiplied and 
aggravated with fearful rapidity ; notwithstand- 
ing the expense of money and talent, at which 
about a third past of our educated men are set 
apart to study their origin and remedies. They 
who land on our shores from foreign countries, 
speak with surprise of the sickly forms, which 
every where meet them, so different from the 
healthy countenances common in Europe. I 
am told, that Dr. Jackson, in a recent public 
lecture to the citizens of Boston, adverted to this 
fact in proof of the bad quality of the water of 
our cities. But I believe, that " water ;J is only 
one article among many, in which we have for- 
feited the divine blessing, by being wise in our 
own conceits. (Ex. xxiii. 25.) The superiority 
of the German students to our own, in uniting 



18 

intense study with vigorous health, is well 
known. 

Again, the mortality among our young chil- 
dren vastly exceeds what takes place among the 
young of any of the more perfectly organized 
animals. They have instinct alone for their 
guide ; and following it simply, fulfil the end of 
their being. It is derogatory to the divine good- 
ness, to suppose, that man may not generally fill 
the number of his days indicated by his organi- 
zation, as well as the inferior animals. But 
man, in addition to instinct, has for guides, 
reason, experience, the word of God. These 
teach him, that he was created for nobler ends, 
than to lay up wealth, as life's supreme good. 
If he will not listen to the admonition, he must 
suffer loss in the very good at which he so 
eagerly grasps. 

A case now in my eye, though an extreme 
one, still represents too justly the case of our 
country at large. A farmer cultivated his farm 
like one resolved to make the most of it. He was 
esteemed as a thrifty man. Besides a fine stock 
of cattle, he had money to some considerable 
amount, accumulated by his own industry, at 
interest. But he had no thoughts for the other 
world, or even for the more ennobling concerns 



19 

of this. His Sabbaths were spent in looking 
after the business of his farm. He has now 
been for several years the tenant of a retreat for 
the insane. I have no doubt, that his insanity 
was contracted by his unbending concentration 
of thought upon one grovelling pursuit : and 
that, had his Sabbaths been devoted to Him who 
claims them as his own, and had the instruction 
of his children and the operations of evangelical 
benevolence duly entered into his every day 
calculations, he might now have been in the full 
enjoyment of all his powers. 



BODY AND SOUL. 
No. III. 

Sana mens in corpore sano. 

If there was in the institutions of Moses a 
divine wisdom, which aimed at a sound body as 
essentially requisite in order to the sound mind, 
we need not go far to find a sufficient reason for 
some obvious defects in the religious character 
of our age, and especially of our country. Ob- 
scurely as truths were revealed under the ancient 



20 

dispensation, there appears an evenness and a 
completeness in the character of the Old Testa- 
ment saints, for which at the present day we 
might long seek in vain.* Among Christians, 
what sectarian rancor do we witness ! what irri- 
tability of temper ! what transient heats and 
long languors in religious zeal ! The remedies 
most urgently recommended are, intenser prayer, 
stricter keeping of the heart, more self-distrust, 
greater activity in the service of God and men's 
souls, and others of like character. All these 
things ought to be done : but while some other 
things are left quite undone, I have no expecta- 
tion of seeing the end attained. I hold, that the 
bodies of Christians have become so unfit resi- 
dences of the Holy Spirit, that we need seek no 
stronger reason, why his influences are so feeble 
and variable there — so hardly distinguishable 
from animal heats and irregularities. 

It is eminently a time, when we may complain, 
"O the hope of Israel, the Saviour thereof in 
time of trouble, why shouldest thou be as a 
stranger in the land, and as a wayfaring man 

* If there, is any thing in the church at this time in 
which there is a greater deficiency than in any other, it is 
this, that there is so little completeness of Christian 
character. — Memoir of Anna Jane Linnard 7 p. 87. 



21 

that turneth aside to tarry for a night 1 Why 
shouldest thou be as a man astonied, as a mighty 
man that cannot save ? " — Jer. xiv. 8, 9. It is 
pretty evident, that the means hitherto chiefly 
relied on for sustaining religion in the church, 
are losing their efficacy. Protracted meetings, 
and the kindred system of operations, have served 
their turn and done good. True, their enemies 
have objected, that religion was represented as 
a periodical or occasional thing, rather than as 
a steadily governing principle. I hold the ob- 
jection about as reasonable, as to maintain, that 
a dead body is better than a living one, the 
latter being subject to feverish heats and convul- 
sive throes. Still, we should not rest content 
with entertaining the Saviour " as a stranger in 
the land, and as a wayfaring man that turneth 
aside to tarry for a night/' And he now seems 
warning us to prepare for his steady abiding 
with us, or to calculate on his utter withdrawal. 
Now I firmly believe, that the point, to which 
the attention of Christians needs most particu- 
larly to be directed, is the study of the elements 
of physiology, and the influence of the body on 
the mind. I expect only a puny, inefficient, in- 
constant race of Christians, where the soil is 
cultivated so little on scientific principles, and 

3 



22 

such food is eaten as such a soil produces. Few 
seem to trace intemperate sallies of passion, 
blunted senses which require to be taught once 
and again the first principles of the oracles of 
God, feverish contentions about hair-breadth 
varieties of opinion or mere verbal differences, 
to a physical cause. Few, I believe, justly esti- 
mate, how much may be traced to stomachs 
long irritated by ill-digestible materials, where, 
to keep down acid fermentations, resort has long 
been had to tea, coffee, tobacco, brandy, opium, 
cayenne or hot drops, according to the individ- 
ual's fancy. 

Much has been said of ardent spirit as the 
great source of vice and misery : and I believe, 
it has not been condemned too utterly. At the 
same time, to banish alcohol entirely, both in the 
form of distilled and fermented liquors, and there 
stop, I should consider an achievement about 
as important, as to dip a bucket of water out of 
Charles river, when our object was to dry up the 
stream. It is not the single article that is work- 
ing so much mischief; it is a thousand. Let 
any one judge for himself, after feeding awhile 
on the sponge-balls sold from our bakeries ; or 
after looking into some of the total abstinence 
families who have lived several years on the 



23 

produce of some of our farms, which have been 
well forced into good liking by the rank mate- 
rials carted out from the city, and not well 
tempered with lime, or other corrective. I fully 
believe, that much of the milk so produced for 
the market, is a more pernicious beverage than 
pure brandy and water. But perhaps it is unfair 
to specify any instances, when there are so 
many, too numerous to mention, equally de- 
serving. 

As things are, the temperance cause labors 
under a vast disadvantage. Indeed, I know, 
that some of its earliest and warmest friends, 
men too of curious observation, have lately ex- 
pressed the opinion, that in some of our cities 
the total abstinence men suffer more than the 
moderate drinkers. I can easily believe the 
fact possible. I can easily believe that the re- 
moval of one item from such a frightful round 
of unsuspected evils, would produce disarrange- 
ment and dissension, worse, apparently (at least) 
than the forced quiet kept up before; even if 
this should not be restored by worse means than 
that for which they were substituted. 

By the researches of the wise men of this 
world, God is again revealing with fresh light 
the truth so constantly implied in ancient reve- 



24 

lation, that body and soul are intimately united, 
and that it is in vain to expect one worthily to 
reflect the image of its Maker, while the culti- 
vation of the other is sadly neglected. The 
church must no longer neglect a truth so im- 
portant. This neglect has already cost her the 
loss of too many of her brightest ornaments and 
ablest defenders in the midst of their usefulness. 
It is vain under such loss to talk of the mys- 
teries of Providence. There is no mystery about 
the matter, except so far as it is mysterious how 
the infatuation of men takes place under the 
providence of God. The plain truth is, (enough 
for us to know,) through careless ignorance or 
wilful obstinacy, we have been living in flagrant 
violation of laws open to our investigation in the 
works of nature, and not obscurely intimated 
(many of them) in the word of God ; and we 
have only suffered the penalty consequent on 
such transgression. We have talked enough 
of the depressed state of religion, the increase of 
vice, error and infidelity, the activity of the 
agents of darkness, and the need of God's inter- 
posing Spirit. I hope the heart-searchings and 
the prayers of the closet have corresponded. If 
so, then I expect also to see Christians generally 
making it a matter of conscience to inquire, 



25 

how they shall render their bodies more fit 
temples for the Holy Spirit's residence ; to 
make an effort to provide themselves with plain 
and wholesome food ; and to encounter the self- 
denial of bringing stomachs accustomed to a 
most vicious mode of living to crave no other 
stimulus. I forbear to enter into detail on these 
and kindred points ; because my end is better 
answered, if the reader is sufficiently convinced 
of the importance of the views I have suggested, 
to subscribe for the Moral Reformer, a work too 
cheap, too good in its design (as I am confident 
it will be in its execution) to be a stranger in 
any Christian family. 



BODY AND SOUL. 

No. IV. 

I have before remarked, how an acknow- 
ledgment of the intimate connection between 
body and soul — of the necessity of thoroughly 
cultivating each in order to the perfection of the 
other — pervades the Mosaic institutions. After 

3 * 



26 

long neglect, the principle is again attracting 
the attention of thinking men. Like all new 
thoughts especially, it is liable to be extrava- 
gantly and erroneously applied. A sound mind, 
in the apostolic sense, is eminently needed here. 
I hope, it is not anti-spiritual to say, that the 
sound mind is so hardly to be expected apart 
from the sound body, that we may well suspect 
the judgment of those, who think to set off the 
celestial genius of their idol, by contrasting it 
with its feeble, trembling bodily frame. I fear, 
we shall too generally find in such geniuses, a few 
prominent sparkling traits of mind, with a sad 
want of harmonious balance between its powers. 
I hail the progress of phrenology, so far at 
least as recognizing the principle in question; 
and this without at all committing myself to 
maintain, that the science is as sure or as prac- 
tical, as its decided votaries profess. I find no 
objection to its truth in the fact, that the ac- 
knowledged leaders of the public mind have 
generally been disposed to treat it with ridicule 
and contempt. If it be really founded in truth, 
and more than a very little in advance of 
thoughts previously admitted, nothing else was 
to be expected, judging from all past history. 
The fame of Columbus and Galileo is purchased 



27 

at the cost of first being treated as a madman or 
driveler. 

If the truth of phrenology should come to be 
generally acknowledged, no doubt, it will share 
the fate of astronomy and geology, in being 
pressed into the service of irreligion : nor need 
we doubt, that the attempt will again be worse 
than a failure. Indeed while yet to illustrate 
religion by the light of phrenology has hardly 
been thought of, its truth being admitted seems 
to afford one of the best vindications of two of 
the doctrines, which the wisdom of the world 
has most labored to philosophize out of the 
Bible. First, it entirely overturns the Arminian 
notions of moral agency, as if this implied con- 
tingency, absence of bias, a self-determining 
power of the will — as if the voluntary acts of 
free agents could not be calculated on with 
moral certainty. Again, phrenology falls in 
completely with what seems to be implied in the 
apostle's reasoning, 1 Cor. xv., as well as other 
Scriptures ; namely, that man was originally 
created body and soul, each being essential to 
perfect man; that " immortality was the condi- 
tion of creation, and death came in as a surprise 
upon nature ;"* and that the redemption of 

* Sherlock. 



28 

Christ is not perfect, till man be restored to im- 
mortality of both body and soul. I shall in this 
number use the language of phrenology. It will 
save circumlocution, and render the sense 
plainer and more satisfactory to one class of 
readers: while they who recognize only the 
general principle of the sound mind and the 
sound body contributing each to either, will be 
able, I hope, to change the language, and find 
no substantial fault of argument. 

Nothing seems at present better established, 
than that religion thrives best left to its own 
energies, unhampered by the professed protec- 
tion of state establishments. A plausible objec- 
tion may hence be derived against the ecclesi- 
astical constitution of the Hebrews. But we are 
hardly driven to the necessity of maintaining, 
that God committed the superintendence of 
religion among them to a privileged order, pur- 
posely to show, by preserving a goodly religious 
influence through a series of ages, that there 
was a superior unseen power at work, reversing 
the results, which have uniformly come forth, 
wherever human wisdom has committed a gen- 
eral interest to the like keeping. As with other 
general interests, so with religion, there seems 
to be a stage in the progress of society, before 



29 

which, purely republican principles do not suc- 
ceed ; and after which, aristocracy, and mo- 
nopoly invariably work the like ill effects. 

Now, if man is furnished with an organ of 
Veneration, to be cultivated in common and in 
harmony with others ; before spiritual views of 
God come to be generally and strongly appre- 
hended, other means for the exercise of venera- 
tion seem requisite. Philosophers, nay, Chris- 
tian doctors, have accordingly justified the 
imposition of image-worship on the populace. 
With more wisdom, God, as a temporary expe- 
dient, and during the early development of 
human thought, established a splendid ritual, 
and holy priesthood. So too, in detesting the 
impositions almost every where practised on the 
multitude by the splendor of royalty and nobility, 
we ought not to overlook the consideration, that 
where God is not spiritually apprehended, the 
welfare of man requires some object for the 
exercise of his Veneration : and so far at least, 
these pageants may serve a good purpose. 

Here comes in a consideration peculiarly in- 
teresting to our countrymen. From among us 
the habit of venerating an institution for its an- 
tiquity or unknown origin, or an order of men 
as invested with some mysterious science or 



30 

divine right, has entirely disappeared ; unless 
some shreds of it still hang around medical 
science : and these are fast disappearing before 
the inquiring spirit of the age, which is hasten- 
ing to the conclusion, that the essential princi- 
ples, on which health depends, are few and 
intelligible to the mind generally enlightened ; 
and that so far as cures are wrought by medical 
skill beyond the patient's comprehension, the 
physician was not very wide from the truth, who 
defined his art to be " the art of amusing the 
patient till nature works a cure." It is said, 
that the heads of Americans generally exhibit 
the organ of Veneration less than in almost any 
other people. Now, if the mental faculty is 
really connected, as here supposed, with physical 
organization, its disuse must tend directly to 
the deterioration of the whole physical frame, 
since, for the perfection of each part, every 
other must be duly exercised. Here may be 
one cause of our physical ills adverted to in a 
former number. And here too we see in a new 
light why, all inferior objects of veneration 
having lost their power, we need especially the 
power of genuine religion to save us both body 
and soul. 
^ There is apparently at least a great difficulty 



31 

in reconciling peace principles, as often taught, 
with the divine commission given to the Israelites 
to exterminate the nations of Canaan. Let us 
try to hope for the universal reign of peace and 
pacific principles, without leaving a shadow of 
suspicion on any thing which God has enjoined. 
If Combativeness and Destructiveness are essen- 
tial parts of the human constitution, they too 
should be exercised in their own turn and pro- 
portion. They had been restrained by the 
bondage in Egypt. It might have been nec- 
essary to call them into exercise, to give edge to 
the mind, and decision to the character of the 
people ; controlling their exercise at the same 
time by Conscientiousness and Benevolence. 
Accordingly, though commissioned to combat 
and destroy, they were expressly informed, that 
they were used as instruments in the hands of a 
just God to exterminate the devoted nations for 
their abominable iniquities ; and warned, that 
themselves should suffer the like, if they fell into 
the like practices; while a promise was given, 
that in the seed planted in the place of the ex- 
tirpated race, all the nations of the earth should 
be blessed. 

At the period of the reformation, the world 
was in a state to afford exercise to Combative- 



32 

ness and Destructiveness in another and nobler 
way, than through feats of physical courage. 
There were enormities of doctrine and abuses 
of practice to be assailed and overcome by argu- 
ment and ridicule. Combativeness and De- 
structiveness were called into action together 
with the intellectual and moral faculties. The 
result was an awakening of thought — a devel- 
opment of intellectual vigor — such as the world 
had not witnessed before. 

If there is any justness in the views now 
presented, the true way to establish universal 
and perpetual peace, is not to deny the legitimacy 
of the faculties, which war calls into exercise,, 
but to provide for their activity in a way more 
accordant with the improved condition of the 
world. The work of reform is not completed. 
Errors still swarm, which need to be refuted. 
There are still faults abundant in our systems 
of education, and in our social institutions, 
which require a master's correction, or we 
should not be so far behind the ancient people 
of God, in physical vigor, and in completeness 
of religious character. To search out and put 
down the immediate and remote causes of evils 
so obvious and so oppressive, will afford ample 
range for all lawful gratification of the propensi- 



33 

ties to combat and to destroy, while love to God 
and good-will towards man shall be more vigor- 
ous, for the harmony with which faculties so 
often set in opposition, can now act together. 



BODY AND SOUL. 

No. V. 

I do not think that a thorough physical 
education would require of students a very great 
proportion of time for bodily exercise. On the 
contrary, I believe that a good acquaintance 
with the various agents affecting our health, and 
a practical regard to the corresponding laws, 
would save many hours spent in bodily exercise, 
required not by the necessity of our constitution, 
but as the penalty of infringing its laws in the 
misuse of the stomach, brain, skin, and other 
organs. I believe that the German students 
secure their better health with less time spent in 
exercise, than ours generally employ. I might 
urge then the importance of physical education 
on the very ground of redeeming more time for 

4 



34 

intellectual pursuits ; though I can hardly give 
him credit for the art of thinking, who has never 
found his best intellectual efforts to have been 
made on days, when ten or twelve hours were 
spent in bodily labor, and an hour employed in 
the evening to put into form the result of the 
day's thoughts. 

In making education practical, there is no 
need of dispensing with intense or abstract 
thinking — no need of vindicating the thought- 
saving scheme, on which it has become so fash- 
ionable to compose school books. We need not 
rob Greek, Latin and Mathematics of their due 
importance, in requiring that into our systems of 
education should enter some instruction of the 
young into the constitution of their own bodies, 
and the agents affecting them. It is shameful 
to fill the heads of youth with the knowledge of 
names, perhaps in half a dozen different lan- 
guages, while they are left profoundly ignorant 
of almost all the things around them. A large 
majority probably of those among us who are 
supposed to have received a finished education, 
know how to distinguish some five or six of the 
most common rocks ; about twice that number 
of our common birds ; know as much of the 
properties of plants, as suffices not to substitute 



35 

ivy or henbane for any of the garden esculents ; 
and as little of the Linnaean system of classifi- 
cation as they do of the geography of Saturn ; 
while their knowledge of other things corres- 
ponds. Or, if this is an account of what has 
been, rather than what is, the change is quite 
recent, and very imperfectly effected. 

A system of education claiming the name of 
liberal, ought to embrace such instruction in 
the elements of physiology, in the Materia 
Medica too, especially the botanic department, 
as to qualify each to practice la plus salutaire 
des medecines, celle quj s' attache plus a prevenir 
Its maux qu' a les guerir ; and even to know 
how to exercise some discrimination on emer- 
gencies, when professional advice cannot be 
seasonably called. The knowledge I would re- 
commend, tends neither to undervalue more 
profound professional skill, nor to dispense with 
the necessity of professional advisers ; any more 
than the Protestant doctrine of the right of 
private judgment supersedes the necessity of 
extraordinary biblical research, or of the Chris- 
tian ministry. But it is desirable that every 
one should be able to decide, when to call in 
medical advice is necessary, and then to listen 
to it like a rational being. The liberal-minded 



36 

and benevolent physician would feel a satisfac- 
tion in administering to such patients, superior 
to that of being blindly reverenced for the exer- 
cise of some mysterious, incomprehensible art ; 
as the evangelical pastor finds a purer pleasure 
in enlightening and guiding souls inquiring the 
way of salvation, than the Romish priest can' 
know in exacting a surrender of reason and 
conscience, from the dupes, who, content with 
the opus operatum, have no general principles 
for their direction in cases where specific direc- 
tions from their superior are wanting. Protes- 
tants as we boast to be, there is too much popery 
among us, in regard to the body at least. Let 
us aim to be Protestants in regard to this also. 
I mean, as we expect every Christian to have 
an enlightened conscience for a sufficient guide 
in ail ordinary circumstances, and to have his 
understanding in difficulties enlightened, not 
dictated to, by his pastor ; as we expect him to 
exercise repentance as a free, intelligible act, 
and not to do a penance, for which he can give 
no more rational account than that Father Con- 
fessor so prescribes ; so, unless the body with its 
functions is more difficult to comprehend than 
the soul, let us aim to make such instruction 
general, that men shall not continually err 



37 

grossly in diet and regimen, or be at a nonplus 
under every little ailment ; that on the great 
and rare occasions when that knowledge which 
few can possess is really necessary, they may 
not submit to it so blindly, that the result is 
pretty sure to be life or death, as Veneration and 
Hope, or as Cautiousness is most active. 

I know that good books and good professors 
are extremely scarce for the instruction I am 
recommending ; just because public sentiment 
has been so silent as to demanding any thing of 
the kind. Let its tone change, and the deside- 
ratum will soon be supplied. Our Saviour acted 
on the principle of doing good to the bodies of 
men, to win the way for advice as to their souls. 
Though miracles have ceased, there is a vast 
field for inquiry into the art of preserving 
health, so unoccupied, nor yet requiring very 
much time for coming to some satisfactory 
results, that a new generation of ministers may 
fairly resolve on qualifying themselves for ren- 
dering such advice to their people, as, for pre- 
paring the way for religious instruction, and as 
a pledge of seeking their good, — shall be next 
to the power of working miracles. 

4* 



38 



AN APPEAL 

TO THE MEMBERS OF THE THREE LEARNED 
PROFESSIONS. 

It is in vain to attempt concealing that there 
is at work a spirit of ultraism, radicalism, anti- 
ism, and infidelity, which is aiming to bring 
your professions into discredit, as the threefold 
band which binds in slavery the human mind, 
and stays the progress of general improvement. 
Men so affected argue thus : The legal profes- 
sion, by its education and constitution, is made 
to flourish best in a quarrelsome community. 
Legislation very much, and jurisprudence alto- 
gether, fall into the hands of men, whose 
interest it is to render law complicated and 
obscure, and entangle people in difficulties. 
The medical profession likewise is not consti- 
tuted to teach people the art of preserving 
health, but to take advantage of the errors com- 
mitted through ignorance of such art. And 
though the Reformation did away the former 



39 

constitution, by which the priests were made 
inevitably to " eat up the sin of the people, and 
set their heart on their iniquity," [connive at the 
vices, which were filling their own coffers,] yet 
the men, whose mode of arguing we are review- 
ing, choose to overlook this fact, and fix atten- 
tion rather on another, namely, that the three 
professions are educated at the same colleges, 
and are apparently firmly united in maintaining 
each other's acknowledged rights. Hence the 
indiscriminate assault upon the whole. 

Now whatever qualifying considerations men 
of discrimination may oppose to the sweeping 
conclusion, we can hardly show, that there is 
not truth enough in the reasoning, to render it 
a powerful engine with a people so restlessly 
inquisitive, so given to change, as ours. I 
would propose the means of averting the ca- 
lamity which threatens. My proposal is briefly 
this, not to await the outbreaking of the tempest, 
but now, while you can do it with credit, to 
give your hearty concurrence to doing away the 
constitution of things, on which the objections 
are raised, and introducing such a change, that 
people shall pay for knowledge, rather than be 
taxed for ignorance. 

I will give a specimen of the evils requiring 



40 

correction. It was lately asked of a lawyer in 
one of the principal manufacturing towns of 
New England, how many of his profession 
would be wanted in his town, if they acted on 
evangelical principles ? (" Blessed are the 
peacemakers.") He answered jive. The ex- 
isting number is about twenty-five. What a 
waste of talent, just because we do not make it 
the interest of our lawyers to be peacemakers ! 
while we are daily assailed with the cry of the 
want of educated teachers at the West. 

I will give an instance of what I mean by 
having people pay for knowledge, rather than 
be taxed for ignorance. Suppose the city of 
Boston should employ two physicians (more if 
necessary) to each Ward, to be paid competent 
salaries for administering to all the sickness, 
more or less, within their respective Wards, with 
one general superintendent. These would keep 
their eyes wide open, to watch for disease in its 
causes. They would watch the bakers, whether 
they were using bad flour, or mixing pernicious 
articles with their bread. They would watch 
the market in all its departments. They would 
lecture people publicly on the means of preserv- 
ing health. They would be instant in season and 
out of season, to enforce these means. Thus 



41 

nine-tenths of the existing sickness would be 
prevented. For it is acknowledged, that thus 
much of our diseases, at least, arises from violat- 
ing the laws of our being ; and people could 
much better pay the same sum for instruction in 
these laws, than as a penalty for their violation. 

Such a change would be the best of all de- 
fences against quackery. We have tried what 
legislation, and argument, and ridicule could do, 
under the present constitution of things. But 
so easy is it in this country to throw odium upon 
whatever looks like monopoly, chartered rights, 
and exclusive privileges, that the very force, 
which has been arrayed in defence of the regular 
practice, bids fair to recoil on the same with 
destructive force, for its anti-republican aspect 
Let scientific physicians concur to bring about 
such a change, that people shall pay for health, 
and not for sickness — let them thus do away all 
cause for suspicion, that they are jealous of real 
improvements in medicine, and there will remain 
little cause of complaint, that men of influence 
countenance unscientific pretenders. 

There is one aspect of the community, which 
seems to me to demand the serious consideration 
of medical practitioners, and those looking for- 
ward to the profession. In regard to temper- 



42 

ance, society is separating into two divisions. 
On the one hand are those, who mean to carry 
out the principle of being temperate in all 
things ; who consider, that God in his word has 
repeatedly promised health and long life as the 
rewards of keeping the whole of his law ; who 
are making it a matter of conscience to inquire, 
how we have violated his law, moral or physiolo- 
gical, that the average number of our days is 
only about half that granted to the ancient 
Israelites ; who will not be satisfied, till they 
have discovered the error and corrected it. On 
the other hand is the reckless portion of the 
community, who mean to give the reins to ap- 
petite ; and when the constitution runs down, 
wish to wind it up, as quick as possible, and 
give the reins to appetite again. This class are 
fast falling into the Thomsonian practice, as the 
best of any thing for their purpose. Neither of 
these classes affords much encouragement to 
those, who are anticipating to practice medicine 
according to the present system. That this 
state of things is so little regarded at the fountain 
heads of lore and wisdom, I can only resolve 
into the general fact, that they have ever been 
the last practically to regard changes well un- 
derstood every where else. But it really seems 



43 

to me, as if our medical professors were acting 
very much like the hen, when she hides her 
head, and seems to think herself secure from 
danger. 

Let a beginning be made (as I have instanced 
above) of substituting the purchase of knowledge 
for the tax of ignorance, and its advantages 
would soon become so apparent as best for all 
concerned, that I think the principle would soon 
be carried into every department, where it is yet 
wanted. It would so increase the love of know- 
ledge, and the means of purchasing it, as to 
increase, I verily believe, the encouragement 
held out to thoroughly educated men. 

1 cannot now go into the details of the plan I 
propose ; but I think I have sufficiently ex- 
plained its fundamental principles. Some may 
be disposed to smile at it, as a pleasing but im- 
practicable speculation. Let such reflect how 
rapidly in these times public sentiment has been 
revolutionized on many points. Let them reflect 
again, that so changeable are all things now, 
that which was in repute yesterday being an 
abomination to-day, that he who regards but his 
own comfort, has small inducement to trim his 
sails to the popular gale, but seems caft by 
Divine Providence on a sort of necessity, to take 



44 

his stand firmly on what he honestly believes to 
be truth and right, and leave the world to come 
into his views at its leisure (rather in its haste.) 
Let the clergy especially consider, that they 
have already been so well sifted, (not thoroughly, 
I confess,) that the independent course now ex- 
acted of them need cost very little indeed. 

One word more. The change now proposed, 
by making it the interest of lawyers to keep 
people peaceable, and of physicians to keep 
them healthy, would not only promote their own 
quiet by screening them from jealousy, but 
would render them very acute for their own 
interest to discern, what system of religious 
teaching best renders people orderly and tem- 
perate ; and they would throw their influence 
accordingly. And now, good reader, do you 
not see that all this would be just so much clear 
gain to your own denomination ? I expect, 
therefore, that you at least will consider of my 
proposal, and favor its adoption. 



45 



A SECOND APPEAL 

TO THE THREE LEARNED PROFESSIONS. 

A few weeks since the writer took the liberty 
to address a Circular to the presidents of most of 
the New England colleges, expressing views 
kindred to those of his last Appeal, but in a 
manner, which seemed to him more proper for 
private suggestion, than for publication at 
present. He complained that our social institu- 
tions and our systems of education, were based 
on a practical denial of some truths, admitted by 
most Christians to be fundamental principles of 
revelation ; and urged the necessity of an im- 
mediate effort for some changes, going to a depth, 
which some might stigmatize as radicalism. 
He is happy to acknowledge the receipt of an 
answer from the president of one of our colleges, 
(second to none for furnishing thorough scholars 
and practical men,) acknowledging the necessity 
of applying radicalism (in its legitimate meaning) 
5 



46 

at all the sources of moral influence, more in- 
dustriously than the times have yet permitted : 
declaring the increasing interest, with which he 
had long revolved the subjects suggested in the 
Circular ; and the harmonious concurrence of 
the Corporation and Faculty, with which he is 
associated, to correct the glaring discrepance 
existing between the Christianity professed in 
our colleges and the mode in which education 
has been there conducted; of which correction 
he gives a good account of the beginning there 
made. I cannot doubt, that the change there 
begun, will so manifest its advantages in furnish- 
ing superior men for every exigency, that our 
other colleges must follow the example, or be 
left " like hulks anchored in the stream of time, 
serving to show how fast the current of general 
improvement is passing by." * 

* I have no intent of representing this comparison as 
really applicable to our colleges in their present state ; 
still 1 cannot but agree with many of the best friends of 
education, that there is no necessity, why, after one has 
completed what is nominally his education, his real edu- 
cation should be hardly begun. The managers of our 
colleges and professional schools need to be reminded, 
that the world is fast discovering the evils incident to 
the possession of funds, to the habit of going in a pre- 
scribed track, and to being venerated as wisdom's and 



The writer several years since engaged some- 
what zealously in inculcating some sentiments, 
which sounded new to most ears, the leading 
principles of which were, that to carry forward 
reform and improvement, we ought to abolish all 
monopolies * and mysteries, make the interest 
and duty of every class of men coincide, and 
have people pay for knowledge rather than be 
taxed for ignorance. In urging the immediate, 
full, and practical admission of these principles 

learning's highest seats. The only remedy 1 would 
now propose for these evils is, the encouragement of 
other seminaries founded on a juster estimate of human 
nature and the wants of the American people ; and that 
private or seZf-education be more duly appreciated. I 
would not discredit our theological seminaries. They 
certainly possess some advantages over the old way of 
studying with a parish minister ; while this also has its 
advantages for introducing the student into the practical 
duties of his profession. I would have a class educated 
both ways, that by comparison, each might learn better 
its own defects, and be excited to a holy emulation. 

* A great step towards perfection, would be the full 
and practical admission of the principle, that every one 
has the right to employ his talents to the utmost for his 
own benefit, as far as he can do it without injuring 
others. This system of government is certainly far su- 
perior to that of exclusive privileges of any kind. * * * 
Monopoly impedes improvement in every thing. — Spurz- 
heim on Education, pp. 182, 190. 



48 

as the great desideratum for giving an impulse 
onward to the human mind, like that created by 
the Reformation, though at the cost of being 
pitied as a fanatic, a visionary, and a dreamy 
speculator, he was conscious of being entitled to 
no peculiar credit for independence : so fully 
was he satisfied, that by the mutation of these 
times, Divine Providence was casting us on a 
sort of necessity to take our stand firmly on what 
we honestly believe to be truth and right, and 
let the world give in its accordance, when it is 
ready : so clearly did he see, that this restlessly 
inquiring and novel-seeking age must before 
long pay some attention to his principles ; and 
so sure was he, that once firmly grasped, their 
truth and importance would be so fully felt, that 
they never would be abandoned. He is now 
happy to acknowledge the testimonials coming 
in from all quarters, and from men generally 
acknowledged as of sound judgment, giving in 
their accordance with the writer's views. Thus 
with confirmed confidence, he invites all, by the 
manifest folly of steering by a breath so change- 
able as the popular gale, to inquire freely, and 
decide firmly. 

I believe I have never written or uttered any 
thing, and hope I never shall write or utter any 



49 

thing, in regard to my favorite views, to require 
a formal protestation, that, as I know my own 
heart, I am not actuated by anger or hatred 
towards any class of men. I am confident, that 
they who are familiar with my writings and con- 
versation, will not suspect me of being otherwise 
actuated, than by a desire to promote the best 
temporal and eternal welfare of the members of 
each of the three learned professions, as well as 
of society at large. And if any should under- 
take the defence of my principles by writing or 
orally, I hope they will take care, not only so to 
feel, but so to express themselves, as never to be 
suspected of feeling otherwise. Especially I pray, 
that these principles may never be made hobbies 
for party organization. I honestly think them 
too pure and respectable for such prostitution. 

One very much neglected principle of Chris- 
tianity and of sound philosophy is, that "He who 
is not for me is against me;" or, that whoever 
loves not his neighbor as himself— has not an 
ardent desire, like Howard, to promote the wel- 
fare of mankind — a decided determination for 
this end to sacrifice ease and interest, profes- 
sional pride and whatever else — he is fairly 
construed as an enemy of his species ; and 
will manifest himself as decidedly such, when 

5* 



50 

placed in circumstances of open conflict between 
his interest and theirs. (Comp. Rom. vii. 
7 — 13 ? viii. 7.) Equally clear is it, that such 
philanthropy is comparatively rare among men ; 
and very peculiarly must that body of men be 
constituted, in which it is the ruling principle. 
Of course whatever body is not so peculiarly 
constituted, is constructively at enmity with the 
welfare of mankind in such a sense, that it will 
be sure to sacrifice that welfare to its own 
present interest, when they come into conflict. 
This simple principle, and this only, fully ex- 
plains, why aristocracies, monopolies, and mys- 
teries, have so completely contradicted in fact 
all that their friends have theorized in their 
favor ; and why the wisdom of this world has so 
often reasoned so sadly amiss, when it seemed 
only to be taking hold of the certain advantages 
of the division of labor. 

That the wise of this world have not more 
fully attended in practice to the curse pro- 
nounced on him that trusteth in man, (Jer. xvii. 
5.) has arisen, I think, from a desire to evade 
the corresponding charge of deceit and wicked- 
ness, (v. 9.) and to find generally prevalent a 
powerful counteracting force of humane feeling 
and sense of honor. Vain effort ! we may say, 



51 

without adopting the peculiarities of any sect, 
So have said men the most diverse in their 
sectarian theology. Says Spurzheim,* " The 
members of the ordinary professions do not think 
it necessary to conceal, that the end and aim of 
all their exertions is selfishness." Says the Rev. 
Mr. Walker, " I fear, we have been a little too 
eloquent in our praises of human virtue : I 
believe, that generally and practically speaking, 
men are just as good as they are required to be 
by public opinion, and no better." f 

I have spoken of the evils which seem to 
threaten your professions more or less from the 
revolutionary character of the age. My best 
advice is, as God has promised all other things 
to them who seek first the kingdom of heaven, 
take him at his word. Resolve in good earnest 
to seek above all things the advancement of his 
kingdom, by doing away, as your education and 
talents have fitted you, the evils, which hinder 
men from reflecting clearly in body and soul the 
image of their Maker. You may then fairly 
expect him to add all things necessary for this 
life, as a pledge of the safety of trusting his 
word for the life which is to come. 

* On Education, p. 271. 

t Election Sermon, (quoted from memory.) 



52 



A THIRD APPEAL 

TO THE THREE LEARNED PROFESSIONS. 

Suppose the ancient legislators of this Com- 
monwealth had incorporated a company of mer- 
chants with the exclusive privilege of dealing in 
merchandize, to admit whom they pleased into 
their own number, to enact their own by-laws 
and fix their own prices. Suppose the people 
had been persuaded that this was all right and 
proper, and that they were deeply indebted to 
these merchants for furnishing them with the 
means of living. We can easily imagine, how 
much might have been argued in favor of such 
a course. It might have been defended as 
necessary to maintain the respectability of the 
mercantile profession ; to protect the public from 
the impositions of incompetent and knavish 
traders. We might have been told of the long 
apprenticeship necessary to instruct one in all 
the mysteries of trade ; and of the advantages of 



53 

a regularly organized body, to check the circu- 
lation of pernicious articles : especially the in- 
ducement they would have from self-interest, to 
check such a free use of ardent spirits, as would 
render thousands unable to pay their debts, or 
provide their families with the necessaries of 
life. But after all that might have been thus 
reasoned, I believe we shall pretty well agree, 
that the evidence of experience would have fully 
refuted the reasoning — that the scheme would 
have produced far worse evils than those arising 
from the present free competition, and the ex- 
cessive spirit of speculation. 

Let us suppose moreover the above imagined 
scheme to be an anomaly in our social institu- 
tions, monopolies and exclusive pretensions to 
be generally odious, the people to be as now 
restlessly inquisitive, and jealous of their repub- 
lican rights. Suppose they have tolerated the 
anti-republican anomaly some centuries, because 
their attention has not been directed towards it ; 
because they have been so busily engaged in 
fighting the cause of freedom, and establishing 
republican principles in other departments ; 
because they have been so proud of their achieve- 
ments in the cause of liberty and independence, 
that He " whose service is perfect freedom, 5 ' has 



54 

justly permitted the delusion, to reserve its ex- 
posure to be brought out for the mortification of 
their pride, whenever he sees fit. Suppose 
again, that in the natural progress of free in- 
quiry, attention begins to be excited towards the 
anti-republican anomaly ; hints are thrown out 
pretty freely, that from the general selfishness of 
mankind, and the known tendency of privileged 
bodies to be very barren of fruits for the public 
good, it would be strange indeed, if behind the 
veil a good deal of imposition were not practised 
on popular credulity. Now, from the habit of 
resting on their privileges, and the implicit def- 
erence of the community, would not the incor- 
porated merchants be in great danger of not 
anticipating the change in public sentiment 
seasonably enough, to yield their antiquated 
pretensions with such good grace as to save their 
credit with the public ? Would not he who 
warned them so to do, very probably be treated 
with contempt, or as an impertinent troubler of 
undisputed rights 1 By a little excess of obsti- 
nacy in not yielding to the changes of the times, 
would they not run the risk of being over- 
whelmed at last by an undeserved torrent of 
public contempt or public indignation ? In 
short, would they not be in imminent hazard of 



55 

incurring a fate like that of Charles and of Louis 
in political life, who, for not yielding a little to 
the popular current in season, found at last all 
concessions vain, and were plunged ten thou- 
sand fathoms beneath the flood ? 

As I write for men accustomed to compare 
and infer, I do not think it necessary to detail 
where, and how nearly may be found parallels 
to the supposition above made. I think some- 
thing more or less like it might be found in 
more than one or two departments. 

If your three professions were fully based 
upon those principles of human nature, which 
Christianity and republicanism teach, (and in 
my view they closely harmonize,) I think we 
should be rid of some such evils as the following. 
Attention would be less directed towards vice 
and wretchedness in their specific forms, and 
more to the root and principle. We should be 
spared the abundance of disgusting details laid 
before the public of the abuses of the repro- 
ductive function, and see more effort made to 
resist the pernicious and expensive fashions, 
which render it so hard for young men to enter 
the domestic relation, and to correct the errors of 
diet, which unnaturally stimulate the appetites. 
We should not have one editor denouncing the 



56 

distilleries, and another the confectioners' shops, 
as almost the only fountain-heads of vice, poverty 
and disease. We should not have a party 
with their attention riveted on one form of sin, 
that in which it appears in a class of men a 
thousand miles off, and denouncing that class of 
sinners with a vehemence and self-complacency, 
as if they saw in others nothing but disinterested 
benevolence. We should not hear so much said 
of depraved appetites, and so little of the causes 
of such depravity. It would have been generally 
understood before this, how appetites are de- 
praved, by the bread which is baked for the 
public; by the vicious manner in which animals 
are fatted for the market, by vicious modes of 
agriculture — by fields exhausted of their strength, 
or forced into overbearing by rank manure, or 
overrun with noxious weeds. We should not 
have the highest authorities in agriculture, 
recommending the exclusive use of green 
manure, because it yields a greater crop, as if 
there were no room for the inquiry, whether the 
crop so yielded be not a fruitful source of dis- 
ease. We should not see on some of our 
apparently most thriving farms, and in most 
healthy situations, whole families wasting away, 
just because the blind have been leading the 



57 

blind, till both are fast falling into the ditch 
together. 

In the blunders committed by people in regard 
to such matters, I seem to see plain indications, 
that left to themselves, they will blunder right at 
last. For the honor of learning, I wish to see 
the professions which are specially dignified 
with her name, do what remains to be done to 
set public sentiment right. Let not the mali- 
cious remark be too fully verified, that heads 
filled with Latin and Greek, mathematics and 
professional lore, are the last »to admit the evi- 
dence of their own eyes, and the suggestions of 
plain, practical, common sense. 



A FOURTH APPEAL 

TO THE THREE LEARNED PROFESSIONS. 

It has been objected to the supposition of the 
incorporated merchants in my last Appeal, that 
it is not exactly parallel to some cases to which 
it might be intended to be applied ; that of the 
qualities of merchandize, which people buy for 

6 



58 

their own consumption, they are far better qual- 
ified to judge, than they are competent to reason 
aright in regard to other interests, which have 
been committed to privileged orders or faculties. 
Thus the Spanish Priest would probably argue, 
So complicated is the structure of the human 
soul, so vast the scheme of religion, that very 
few individuals in our communities know, when 
they need discipline or penance ; hence " they 
can never properly estimate the effects of these 
remedial measures, and are constantly exposed 
to be the dupes of ignorance." 

I reply, first, suppose it had been beat into 
people from their earliest days, that trade is 
such a mysterious art, and so complex the con- 
siderations, on which the value and proper use 
of articles of merchandize depend, that they 
must not exercise their own judgment on the 
case. Suppose it had always been inculcated, 
that to deal in articles of food, requires such a 
minute acquaintance with the internal structure 
of the body, its functions of digestion, assimila- 
tion, &c, with the Latin names of every article, 
and of every part of the body to be nourished 
thereby, that the art must be committed to a 
corporation strictly defended from intruders. 
Suppose law and public sentiment had long 



59 

stigmatized as fortunately we have no 

word to express what I was going to say ; but if 
the wisdom of our legislators and public senti- 
ment had taken the course supposed, we should 
doubtless have had to express the occupation of 
the independent trader in despite of law, a word 
as opprobrious, as is heresy or quackery, to ex- 
press independency in religion or medicine. If 
these suppositions had been realized, would not 
our people generally have been as incompetent 
judges of articles of merchandize, as they are to 
judge in regard to any of their interests ? as in- 
competent as the people of Spain are to judge of 
religious doctrines ? 

I reply, secondly, supposing the people to be 
thus ignorant in regard to merchandize, would 
such ignorance probably render the imposition 
of the incorporated merchants more or less op- 
pressive? Or, supposing religion to be indeed 
so complicated and mysterious a subject, that 
people generally cannot exercise any rational 
judgment upon it, but must surrender reason 
and conscience to their priests, and detest all at 
variance with what they are taught by their 
authorized guides, as spiritual quackery ; would 
this be an argument, why the priests should or 
should not live on the vices of the people 1 



60 

Would it render it more or less dangerous to 
have the people pay for spiritual disease, rather 
than for spiritual health ? 

I am aware, there are qualifying considera- 
tions in regard to the conclusion to which these 
remarks tend. First, there are in every profes- 
sion, men, in whom the gospel has implanted a 
principle opposite to that selfishness, which is 
the general " end and aim." To overlook the 
exceptions would be as unphilosophical as to 
deny the general rule. There have always been, 
too, unlicensed pretenders in medicine, gaining 
more or less the confidence of the populace, to 
keep licensed practitioners from going quite to 
sleep. Then again the jealousy generally enter- 
tained towards the legal profession, has had its 
salutary influence. Many more qualifying con- 
siderations in regard to this profession might be 
suggested ; but to do so would only be to repeat 
the substance of what one has already said in a 
Temperance Address delivered before the Bar 
of Oxford County, Maine. But after all, the case 
is very different from what it would be, if the 
members of the three professions generally were 
impelled by fervent charity to spend and be 
spent, for bringing about the perfection of 
society ; or, in defect of such impulse, if interest 



61 

&nd duty were everywhere made to coincide, 
and the principle of maintaining an order to live 
on the ignorance, vices, and distresses of the 
community, universally and forever abandoned. 

If the clergy have not raised their voice 
against this practical absurdity of our social 
system, it must be remembered in palliation of 
their fault, how jealous people have been of their 
interesting themselves in things political or civil, 
or anywise aside from their more appropriate 
province. But I can say, from ample acquain- 
tance, and particular inquiry, that a feeling has 
taken strong hold, and is fast gaining with them, 
that the Reformation and our own Revolution, 
were but different acts in the great drama of the 
Mind's Emancipation from profession-craft and 
superstition, the last and greatest of which is yet 
to follow. It cannot long escape acute ob- 
servers, that the issue, to which I as their 
herald am urging matters, is but the last great 
battle between republican and aristocratic prin- 
ciples. This contest has been so often agitated 
on other grounds, that no doubt can remain of 
the result. Or rather, so weary am I of all con- 
tention, I would fain hope, that the merits of the 
question at issue may be so fully and forcibly 
urged upon the minds of those, whose unfortu- 

6 * 



62 

nate education has set them in opposition to 
popular rights and the perfection of the social 
system, that they may be induced to decline the 
contest as hopeless, and come over voluntarily 
to the side of freedom. 

But if this result cannot be brought about 
without a degree of agitation, I believe there is 
yet enough of the spirit of '76 among the clergy, 
to furnish a host, not to shrink from responsi- 
bility. The very agitation, I believe, will serve 
to distinguish, who have at heart the bringing 
about of the best welfare of the community, and 
the vindication of Eternal Providence from the 
foul aspersions cast upon it by the present prev- 
alence of bodies loaded with disease, and of pre- 
mature death. 

I have been happy to find the feeling to which 
I have alluded, chiefly among those, who have 
learned wisdom from observing, how often the 
cause of truth and right has been dishonored by 
having enlisted on its side personal animosity, 
party spirit, and egotism ; who do not relieve 
people from the irksomeness of contemplating 
their own sins, by rousing their indignation 
against the sins of others ; who would not have 
an outcry raised against slavery at a distance, to 
divert attention from the slavery existing nearer 



63 

home ; who, whether they contemplate the pros- 
titution of the sacred names of liberty and 
humanity to the gratification of senseless passion 
and unhallowed ambition, or the wide spread 
havoc of human life made by the combined 
operation of superstition and professional pride, 
seem incapable of any stronger emotion, than 
" Father, forgive them, for they know not what 
they do." 

Such clergymen, having acted their part well 
in the closing scene of the Mind's Emancipation, 
may expect to find the word of God quick and 
powerful in their hands to reach the hearts of 
men, as they had scarcely dared hope to witness 
— a change, as if the sword of the Spirit had 
recovered its lost edge ; or as if the Sun of 
righteousness had emerged from the misty hori- 
zontal air, no longer shorn of his beams. 



64 



AN APPEAL 



ESPECIALLY TO THOSE BELONGING TO THE 
PRESENT* LEGISLATURE OF MASSACHUSETTS. 

It appeared strange to some that the attempt 
made in our last legislature to abolish the mo- 
nopoly enjoyed by your profession, should have 
been defeated, after the precedent adopted in 
regard to the medical profession. The fact, 
however, is readily explained, when we recollect 
your preponderance in our legislative assemblies, 
and the known reluctance of privileged bodies 
to yield their antiquated pretensions. I shall 
not canvass the arguments with which you re- 
sisted the late attempt to give free access to the 
bar. They were just those which have been 
used in* every contest with republican principles 
by aristocrats and monopolists, learned ignorance 
and professional pride. But I wish just to call 

* January, 1836. 



65 

your attention to the effect which the continu- 
ance of the present state of things will have on 
your own profession. 

Human wisdom has ever sought to secure the 
respectability of its favored professions, by giving 
the privilege of refusing admission to those 
judged incompetent. The inevitable result of 
all such indulgence uniformly is, that the pro- 
fession most securely defended by mystery and 
exclusive privileges, becomes a refuge for the 
college graduates, and other ambitious young 
men, who want talents and character to stand 
an open and honorable competition. If I wished 
to render a profession not respectable, I would 
take just the course which has ever been pur- 
sued so confidently for securing the opposite 
result. 

Every practical man will admit at once the 
general proposition, that our best securities for 
rendering men faithful and efficient are, to 
watch them narrowly, to leave competition free, 
and to make interest and duly coincide. Strange 
that what appears so plain, should be so long in 
obtaining full admission in practice. I need 
not tell you how religion fared, when people 
yielded implicitly their confidence to their spir- 
itual guides, who were constituted the sole 



66 

judges whom to admit into their number, and 
whose revenues flowed from the vices of the 
people. In regard to the clergy, we have come 
fully into the admission of the principles above 
stated, and their respectability has risen and is 
rising accordingly. 

People did not see at once, that principles 
evident enough in regard to religion, were 
equally applicable in regard to medicine. Ac- 
cordingly, legislative wisdom and popular senti- 
ment long sought to promote the respectability 
of the medical . profession, and the efficacy of 
medical practice, by sustaining a monopoly, 
yielding implicit confidence, and stigmatizing all 
independence as quackery and empiricism. It 
was seen at last, that to legislate against quackery, 
is just as foolish as to legislate against heresy. 
Our last legislature consequently abolished the 
old restrictions, and so far as legislative enact- 
ments can do it, left medical practitioners to be 
estimated like other men, as they can satisfy 
people of their fidelity and skill. The result 
will inevitably be, that the profession will cease 
to be a refuge for aspiring youths, who seek to 
hide ignorance and inefficiency, behind profes- 
sional mystery and professional privileges. 
The character of the profession will rise, as 



67 

much as that of the clerical profession has risen 
under like treatment. 

Mean while, how is to fare the character of the 
legal profession? Will you insist on being 
alone in the privileges of a monopoly — of admit- 
ting, at your own discretion, your members ? 
Your profession now (from late chaftes) pre- 
sents the most alluring opening to ambitious 
ignorance and incompetence. Will you con- 
tinue it thus, or will you voluntarily throw it 
open to that fair competition, acknowledged to 
be so important in all other interests ? 

I know that, in the debates of the last legis- 
lature, you represented the question at issue to 
be, whether, in practising law, a thorough pre- 
paration should be made, just as people are ex- 
pected to prepare themselves competently for 
other business. This is not the question at all. 
It is, whether you, as a close corporation, shall 
decide, or whether the people shall be permitted 
to decide for themselves, who are competent to 
manage their causes, just as they decide in 
regard to their other interests. 

These suggestions are made from the sincere 
desire of seeing your profession not lose, but 
gain, in respectability ; and from the firm con- 
viction, that the course suggested is the sole 
way to such result. 



68 



I THE CIRCULAR.* 



The following is the circular to the presidents 
of the colleges, referred to in the second Appeal. 
Its publication may seem inconsistent with pro- 
fessions therein. But it has been thought best 
for the following reasons. 

1. An answer from only one college has been 
received. It is therefore concluded, that as to 
the rest generally, the old rule is not to be vio- 
lated, that it does not fit their dignity to notice 
any thing of prime importance to the welfare of 
the community, till public sentiment decides for 
it. 

2. I wish to bring fully and plainly before the 
members of each profession, the evils among 
themselves requiring correction. There seems 
more hope of influencing those who come most 

* See A Word to the Wise, &c, Moral Reformer, 
Vol. I. p. 258. 



69 

into contact with general society, than those whose 
duties r re more confined within college walls. 

3. Though it would be mere affectation to 
suppose, that other than professional men will 
not read what is published for them especially, 
or that they will read it without sensation; yet 
I have judged, it might be best to lay it before 
the public : first, judging from all past experi- 
ence, it is hardly to be expected, that any body 
of men will seriously set itself thoroughly to 
remove its own deep-rooted and long tolerated 
evils, till pretty closely urged by the general 
voice. Secondly, I have thought, that the 
manner, in which the cause of the people is 
here stated, would rather give precision and 
temper to their demands, than exasperate their 
passions. 

Dorchestery Mass* June 11, 1835. 
Sir, 

I have some thoughts, the result of the obser- 
vation and reflection of years, on the subject of 
general reform and social improvement, which 
seem to me important enough, to justify me in 
departing from ordinary rules, thus to address 
you. That temperance, and every kindred 
cause, are very much at a stand, I find pretty 

7 



70 

generally acknowledged. Their friends seem to 
be aware, that the root of the evil has not been 
reached, and at a loss, where to strike next. 
Without further preface, I beg leave to suggest 
to you, whether the radical difficulty be not pre- 
cisely here, that about one half of our liberally 
educated men are educated to get their living 
on the ignorance, the vices, and the miseries, of 
the community. Our lawyers are educated, not 
to instruct people in the constitution and laws of 
the land, their rights and obligations, and to 
keep them out of difficulty, but to profit by the 
errors committed for lack of such knowledge. 
Our physicians are educated, not to teach people 
the art of preserving health, but to profit by 
people's ignorance of such art. 

In allowing these interests to remain so much 
in opposition to the best welfare of the commu- 
nity — in confiding so much to the disinterested 
benevolence of men, whom, generally speaking, 
we cannot suppose to be animated with the spirit 
of Paul, to encounter evil report or good report, 
to spend and be spent, for the welfare of man- 
kind — we are practically setting at defiance the 
divine warning, " Cursed be the man that 
trusteth in man ; " and practically denying the 
corresponding declaration, that "the heart is 



71 

deceitful above all things and desperately 
wicked/' (Jer. xvii. 5, 9.) As a community, I 
believe, we are suffering a tremendous penalty, 
for not simply taking God's word here as sober 
truth, and an awful reality. The present con- 
stitution of things render it inevitable, that the 
professions in question should not come into 
measures of reform, (generally speaking,) faster 
than they are driven by the force of public sen- 
timent. I complain not of them particularly. 
The fault belongs to the whole body of society 
— it exists in the general conspiracy to contra- 
dict God's charge of the all-powerful principle, 
by which natural men are governed. I acknow- 
ledge a qualifying consideration, so far as in 
every profession there are men constrained by 
the disinterested love of Christianity : and could 
the whole number be brought under the same 
influence, it would be the best of all remedies. 
But as a supplementary one, we need so to 
modify our social institutions, that people shall 
pay for knowledge, rather than be taxed for 
ignorance — ignorance of the organic laws, and 
the laws of the land. That the necessity of this 
will be generally seen before long, I most firmly 
believe : and I hold it as a thought of great im- 
portance, to be inculcated on the young men 



72 

coming forward for professional life, that times 
are changing, and it behoves them not to cal- 
culate on finding people pay the tax of ignorance 
so submissively as in times past but on being 
the enlighteners and reformers of the a >e. I 
wish, for the credit of learning, to see its sacred 
seats directing public movements in regard to 
this matter ; and not resting, till public senti- 
ment decides it ; as has too often been the case 
with questions of great general interest. I wish 
to engage in the cause men, who will take an 
enlarged, candid, and Christian view of it; and 
keep clear of the anti-ism and party spirit, with 
which almost every thing now is managed. 
There is here no occasion for personal animosity 
towards the men, whose present interests stand 
in the way of the general welfare. I am but 
looking ahead for difficulties, with which they 
must by and by be encompassed, in this repub- 
lican community, and in this restlessly inquiring 
age. If the truth is not told soon by men, who 
will do it kindly and candidly, it will be thun- 
dered out by men, who will make it a hobby for 
party organization. I wish to anticipate such 
men. All my habits and feelings incline me to 
shrink from coming forward as a popular leader. 
For this reason precisely, I wish to see the ac- 



73 

knowledged leaders of the public mind begin- 
ning to move. But if they will refuse, I am 
determined, at no distant day, to appeal directly 
to the people — to tell them plainly, Here is the 
evil, and you must arise in your strength for its 
correction, Flectere si nequeo superos, Ache- 
ronta movebo. 

I am not alone in the views now expressed. 
Several men, eminent as editors, and otherwise, 
have testified to me their cordial interest and 
acquiescence in the same. To prepare the public 
for what I consider as a just view of the subject, 
I have, since the commencement of the year, 
published an Address delivered before the 
Union Temperance Society, of Oxford County, 
Maine, and lately in the Boston Recorder a 
series of articles headed Body and Soul ; which 
may be continued further. Yours, 

WM. WITHINGTON. 



74 



AN ADDRESS, 

DELIVERED BEFORE THE UNION TEMPERANCE 
SOCIETY OF OXFORD COUNTY, MAINE. 

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen, 

The common ground of remark on occa- 
sions like this, has been traversed so often, that 
I purpose to deviate a little from it, and to speak 
on the part taken in the Temperance Reforma- 
tion by the three learned professions respectively. 
And intending to express my sentiments some- 
what freely, I would premise distinctly, that I 
mean to speak of neither in the language of 
boasting, or compliment, or reproach. My 
object is to show, how the events of this reform- 
ation are developing some of the principles of 
human nature, — principles which we shall find 
always govern men taken in a body. If, there- 
fore, in unfolding my views, I seem to speak of 
any class of men as deficient in that vigilance 
and energy which might have been expected of 
them in staying the plague which was desolating 
the land, I shall do it with the design of showing, 



7S 

that their conduct calls for no particular cen- 
sure ; that it is resolvable into the motives, or 
principles, which govern mankind generally. 

One who had never reflected particularly on 
the principles of human nature, which I intend 
to illustrate, if required to predict, where the 
crusade should originate, to be waged so justly 
against the destroyer, — who would lead the van 
in the holy warfare, would probably say, The 
authorized guardians of the public health, the 
profession which introduced alcohol as a medi- 
cine, whose prescriptions more than any thing 
else had given it currency, as an article of com- 
mon necessity; the profession to which so 
implicit deference was paid by the community 
generally in matters within their own province ; 
who should have best known, what evils the 
article was working in society, and were under 
so many obligations first to sound an effectual 
alarm, as faithful sentinels of the public health. 
The fact however was different. Medical books 
indeed told the truth plainly enough as to the 
evils of alcohol ; and medical practitioners were 
not wanting to repeat the same : but the truth 
was generally told as some ministers tell sinners 
their danger and their duty, as if they expected 
not to be attended to. It was left to others to 



originate, and put into action, a bold system of 
measures, like men determined to do something. 
Not the credit, but the happiness of thus taking 
the lead, I believe, must be assigned to the 
clerical profession. Gentlemen of the bar may 
claim the next place in the enterprise. I know 
not how the case may be in this vicinity, but, I 
believe, no one extensively acquainted with facts 
will deny, that the other profession, as a body, 
have been manifestly behind these two in 
promptness and energy to discourage altogether 
the use of spirituous liquors. And if this be 
questioned, the fact that they have not been so 
prominently the leaders in the cause, as might 
have been expected of them, considered simply 
as the authorized guardians of the public health, 
will sufficiently justify the substance of what I 
shall say, as serving to show that what an igno- 
rant or uncharitable observer might tax as a 
flagrant neglect of duty, is to be resolved simply 
into the universal principles of human nature. 

One principle of human action thus brought 
to view, is, that in order to secure in men quick- 
sightedness and efficiency in bringing out great 
practical results it is all-important to make it 
their interest so to do, and their present interest 
too. Now the clerical profession had a present 



77 

interest in devising an effectual remedy for the 
evils of intemperance, (apart from that love of 
God and man, which alone should prove an all- 
constraining motive,) because the immediate 
tendency of men's becoming temperate, is to 
show more respect for religion, and to support 
its institutions more liberally. I say a present 
interest ; because, though I hope it will appear, 
that the worthy part of the other two professions 
are to find in this reformation the promotion of 
their interest calculated on a large scale, yet 
their present interest is receiving a check. For 
in proportion as temperance prevails, an im- 
mense source of litigation, and of disease, is cut 
off. Therefore the first view of things is, that 
the temperance reform is to prove detrimental to 
the legal, and to the medical profession ; and 
the injury threatened to each seems about equal. 
We must look then further for the cause, why 
the legal have gone before the medical profes- 
sion in the cause now before us : and I seem to 
find it in the principle of human action, that 
men as a body are efficient and discerning, in 
proportion as they are held responsible for re- 
sults to public opinion ; released from which, 
they have a strange tendency to run wild in 
their speculations, to act without efficiency, or 



78 

regard to plain fact and common sense ; and in 
the fact that lawyers, much more than physi- 
cians, have always been compelled to feel, that 
they are responsible for the results of their 
practice. 

Accordingly we see what a baneful influence 
mystery and exclusiveness have exerted on every 
science or subject of human thought, into which 
they have been carried. It has often been at- 
tempted to promote science by rich endowments 
and exclusive privileges, that the professors 
might devote themselves to the pursuit inde- 
pendently, without want of books or apparatus, 
or fear of competition, or care of providing for 
their daily bread. But the greatest results have 
been brought about, not by such means, but 
against the whole array of them, — in despite and 
in defiance of them — by men thrown on their 
own resources, compelled to feel that they could 
not sustain their credit on their books, or on 
their privileges ; — but that all their hope was in 
thinking for themselves, and in bringing out 
some great result.* 

When we review the corruptions so early in- 

* Thus it is as true in philosophy as it is in religion, 
that God chooses the foolish things of the world to con- 
found the wise, and the weak things of the world, to 
confound the things that are mighty. 



79 

troduced into the Christian church, so gross 
and so long continued, we seem at a loss, how 
Christianity could so soon become so totally 
changed from what it was. At one time, we 
are indignant at the villany, which could impose 
such senseless doctrines and practices on the 
people. At another, we wonder at the assur- 
ance, which could utter such tales, and expect 
to be believed. At another, we are at a loss, 
how ambition itself, cunning and aspiring as it 
is, could be gratified with leading a multitude 
degraded so nearly to a level with the brutes. 
But in very truth the clergy of those days de- 
serve no peculiar reproach for insincerity, har- 
dihood, or stupidity. They were only acting 
upon the principles, which are common to man. 
The beginning of mischief was, that from the 
manifestly superior learning and superior piety 
of the clergy, the people respectfully yielded up 
to them the sole right of deciding on religious 
subjects. This easily passed into the sole right 
of thinking on such subjects. The conse- 
quences were such as inevitably result from 
leaving to a privileged body to reason and 
decide on a subject of general interest. Not 
being responsible for results to public opinion, 
they reasoned awry more and more : and thus 



so 

were introduced all the corruptions, which de- 
formed and disgraced religion. 

And as the people honored and compensated 
their spiritual guides, not in proportion as they 
were made better by their influence, but just the 
reverse ; as the vices of the people filled the 
coffers of the priests with money paid for the 
exercise of the pardoning and dispensing power; 
interest was set against duty : it was not the 
interest of the clergy to reform abuses, and 
return to a simple and direct method of admin- 
istering to the spiritual ills of mankind. In- 
terest, and the short-sightedness consequent 
upon long irresponsibility, so perverted the 
judgment of the clergy, that it remained for 
others to discover truths so obvious, as that the 
kingdom of Christ is not of this world ; and that 
the working out of one's salvation is not so mys- 
terious a business, that the understanding and 
conscience must be surrendered to a profes- 
sional guide. 

As religion in the church, so fared philosophy 
in the schools, while public curiosity pried not 
into its secrets. Nothing can be more inge- 
nious than the discussions there agitated about 
virtue and vice, entities and quiddities and the 
predicaments; and nothing more barren of 



81 

useful results; till Bacon, (not a philosopher by 
profession but a statesman,) following the leading 
of the times, dragged philosophy from its re- 
treats, to answer at the bar of public opinion, 
for the good it was effecting in the world. 

Just so has fared politics, while left in the 
hands of a privileged body. And the constitu- 
tions of government best promoting the general 
welfare, have been formed, not by men born to 
the privilege, and trained to the art of govern- 
ing ; but by men selected from almost every 
calling, self-taught in the art of government. 
P Again we have an illustration of the stimulat- 
ing power of responsibility, and of the paralyzing 
influence of exclusive privileges, in the acknow- 
ledged fact, that the clergy of an establishment 
are always less efficient men, than the dissenting 
clergy. No matter what the creed, or the form, 
avowed by the establishment ; the result is the 
same. So confessedly in England. The estab- 
lished clergy have far the advantage as to edu- 
cation. (I mean school education ; for education 
includes much more, even all I shall mention as 
making the dissenters what they are.) They 
have the countenance of the great, and the sup- 
port of government. Yet the dissenting clergy 
are the efficient men, (generally speaking, of 

8 



S2 

course.) The reason is obvious : they are under 
greater responsibility. They depend on their 
efficiency for their support. Unless too they 
maintain a better state of morals and religion, 
than exists in the establishment, the question is 
at once raised ; What are you gaining by 
dissent ? The clergy within the establishment 
may suffer religion and morals to fall some 
degrees below the level without, and not attract 
public animadversion : but not too far below, or 
they become subjects of general remark. Thus 
dissent reacts on the establishment : and what 
vigor exists in that, is mainly owing to the great^l 
vigor existing without. 

We see the same principle brought to view, 
when, reviewing the history of our ancestors, 
we find that law, or the administration of justice, 
has never been so widely diverted from its 
proper end, as have other things of like general 
interest. No doubt it has been and may be still, 
unnecessarily complicated and mysterious. 
Judges under the influence of the crown have 
perverted justice. Juries have been intimidated, 
or bribed, or swayed by popular phrenzy, into 
an unrighteous verdict. Still, law has never been 
corrupted like religion. We may find a time in 
the history of our ancestors, when we may well 



83 

doubt, whether no churches would not have 
been better, than the churches existing as they 
were. But at no period can we reasonably 
suppose, that the public would have been bene- 
fited by the abolition of the courts of justice. 

An explanation may be found in the early 
institution of juries. This truly republican in- 
stitution kept the business from becoming 
wholly a mystery in the hands of a privileged 
irresponsible body, or faculty. The common 
sense of twelve plain men had a mighty influence 
to keep professional learning from running wild. 
If the institution has proved useful as furnishing 
a guard to the honesty of judges; I believe, it 
has proved equally so, as a guard against judges' 
being bewildered in their own learning. 

Another comparison between the church and 
the court will illustrate the power of responsi- 
bility. It will be acknowledged by careful 
observers, that generally speaking lawyers in 
their pleading, show more common sense, than 
ministers in their preaching. We shall hardly 
find a lawyer attacking any prejudice in the 
minds of the jury, without a plain and pressing 
cause for so doing ; who, for instance, in ad- 
dressing a jury that believed in witchcraft, would 
attack their belief with argument or ridicule, 



84 



unless the success of his client's cause required 
that belief to be subverted. He would be 
thought strangely unskilled in his profession, 
who should thus arm prejudice against himself. 
But a clergyman thus attacking some opinion of 
his hearers, without thinking what he expects to 
persuade them to or from doing, is not a thing 
unheard of. Thus I have known one to belabor 
himself to bring his hearers to accord with him in 
the opinion of some speculators, that the demo- 
niacs of the gospels were possessed of only natural 
maladies, spoken of as possessed of devils, in 
accommodation to popular opinion. What prac- 
tical decision he expected them to make from 
the opinion, I presume, he never thought to 
inquire. 

We shall hardly find a lawyer addressing a 
jury in the style of his college orations, soaring 
above their level, not thinking why, or under the 
pretence of elevating their taste. Would that a 
like remark might be made of the clerical pro- 
fession. 

Now the cause of this difference is not, that 
in the one profession we find better native sense, 
better scholarship, or more honesty, than in the 
other ; but because the lawyer is under a more 
pressing responsibility. When he addresses a 



85 

jury, every one knows what he has to do — to 
bring them to a present decision in favor of his 
client. If he fails of this, no matter how fine a 
speech he may have made — how much he may 
have pleased his hearers ; he has failed of his 
main object. And if he so fails a few times, 
with reasonable means of success, he loses his 
professional reputation, and loses his support. 
Now, a clergyman ought never to address a 
congregation, without feeling his object to be, to 
bring them to decide a question more important, 
than any that can come before a jury. But he 
is not compelled so to feel. He may preach to a 
people month after month, or even year after 
year, and perhaps not an individual has done a 
single important act in consequence of anything 
he has said. But if he has met the theological 
views of the people, if his sermons have been 
handsomely written, and well delivered ; if he 
has been agreeable in his social intercourse, — 
the people may think he has quitted himself 
well ; and almost of course he takes up the 
same conclusion. 

The principle I have been endeavoring to 
illustrate is, that classes of men are quick- 
sighted to discern what the exigencies of the 
times require, in proportion as their profession is 

8* 



86 

not veiled in mystery, nor defended by exclu- 
sive privileges, and themselves consequently re- 
sponsible to public opinion for results. Such 
are led to calculate their own interest on a large 
and liberal scale. Whereas the opposite state 
of things, while it may consist with a short- 
sighted cunning, seems to deprive men of the 
faculty of calculating their own interest on an 
extended scale. Thus it is that privileged 
orders, whether their privileges were political, 
religious, or scientific, have so generally failed 
to yield their antiquated pretensions to the 
changes of the times, as their own interest obvi- 
ously requires. The case of Charles I., of Louis 
XVI. and his nobility, and of many other privi- 
leged exclusives, enjoying political privileges, or 
whatever else, may be described in the same 
words. A mighty current began to move be- 
neath them. Had they yielded to it in season, 
they might have exerted a full share of influence 
on its direction, saving their credit mostly or 
wholly, perhaps even with increase. But they 
would not. They struggled against yielding an 
inch, till the last gasp. And then, when they 
would gladly have turned, and swum with the 
stream, it was too late : and they were plunged 
ten thousand fathoms beneath the surface. 



87 

The principle thus far illustrated I believe 
sufficiently shows, why the profession which I 
have the honor to address, has seized on the 
decision, required by the exigency of the times, 
in regard to ardent spirit, with more promptness 
generally, than has been manifested by the 
faculty of medicine. I find the cause in the 
fact, that your profession is eminently calculated 
to render you practical men. It is not wrapped 
up in mystery. It is your daily business to clear 
up its intricacies and mysteries to the apprehen- 
sion of common men. And your employers can 
calculate very exactly how well you execute 
your trust. 

The medical faculty have wanted this exercise 
for keeping open eyes, to mark the signs of the 
times, and seize the present exigency. The 
profession has long been considered as so mys- 
terious, and submitted so exclusively to the 
judgment of its professors, as to require implicit 
deference on the part of the employer. Whether 
there are radical defects in the prevailing prac- 
tice, whether in any instance a patient has died 
through wrong treatment, or recovered with a 
constitution so impaired by medicine, that it 
would have been safer on the whole to have 
trusted wholly to nature and nursing, to work a 



88 

cure, have been considered as questions, which 
it would be presumptuous for the uninitiated to 
ask. And we have very absurdly withheld from 
medical practitioners the strong stimulus of self- 
interest to devise a simple, safe, and thorough 
method of curing disease. For instead of secur- 
ing our bodies against disease, as we secure our 
houses against fire ; paving the physician a 
premium to warrant our health and requiring 
him to forfeit a prescribed sum for every day's 
sickness, we have done just the reverse : we 
have paid for sickness, and not for health. And 
it would be very strange, if interest set against 
duty did not here exert the paralyzing influence 
so manifest in all other cases. 

The wisdom of our legislators also has thought 
to secure the efficiency of medical practice by 
laws giving exclusive privileges to the regularly 
licensed practitioner ; as in some countries the 
like has been attempted in regard to religion, by 
establishing a church with its law-supported, 
law-protected clergy ; the same reason being 
assigned in both cases, the necessity of protect- 
ing people against ignorant pretenders. Well 
there is a period of society when it may be best 
to have an established church defended by some 
exclusive privileges. But the time comes, when 



89 

this must be thrown aside, all denominations put 
on a level, and every one left free and unre- 
strained to think on the subject of religion. 
And although at such a time we may expect 
many to abuse their liberty to licentiousness, 
many wild errors to be broached, and have their 
vogue, and many to be imposed upon by false 
pretenders ; yet we may expect, that such errors 
will soon reach their maturity and die away, and 
that all things are hastening to the ultimate 
purity of truth, and to the full development of 
the energies of undefiled religion. 

I think, that a parallel may here be found be- 
tween the science relating to the health of our 
souls, and that which relates to the health of our 
bodies. If I mistake not, it is the misfortune of 
physicians of our day, to live at a period, when 
public sentiment is loudly demanding a great 
change in the means of preserving health ; and 
that like all classes of men, accustomed to ex- 
clusive privileges, and implicit deference, they 
have been a little slow in discerning what the 
exigency of the times requires. Thus I explain, 
why they have been somewhat behind the legal 
profession in the temperance cause. 

As an instance of this falling behind the 
general sense of the community, I might men- 



90 

tion the fact, that after public sentiment became 
pretty decided against the use of ardent spirit, it 
began to be seriously inquired by some of the 
medical faculty, whether it might not be wholly 
dispensed with in medicine; and for a substitute, 
opium seems to have been chiefly depended on. 
Opium however is more decidedly a poison than 
alcohol. But is it liable to the same abuse as 
an intoxicating drug ? Let Turkey, or almost 
any nation of Southern Asia answer. Let China 
answer, how rapidly within a few years, in 
despite of the severest interdicts of the emperor, 
it has there come into general use, slaying and 
debilitating beyond even the pretensions of 
alcohol here in the days of its glory. 

I think, we here have an instance, how apt pro- 
fessional reasoning, not accustomed to submit 
itself to the plain common sense of mankind, is to 
run counter to that sense. This says, resist the 
beginnings of evil. When spirit was introduced 
as the occasional cordial, or the exhilarating 
pledge, O that the men of that day could have 
been aware of its true character and tendency, 
and crushed the serpent still young. A little 
effort then might have availed more than a great 
deal of labor now. All mischief resembles strife 
in its likeness to the letting out of water. At 



91 

first, one man with his shovel, can easily stop 
the breach ; it is soon a flood, and to repair its 
ravages, costs the labor of years. 

But professional reasoners have not been want- 
ing, who should seem to argue thus : Now that 
the evils of ardent spirit, have been fairly laid 
before the public, and it is not found in reputable 
society as a beverage ; since they who drink it 
betray, by their manner of so doing, their con- 
sciousness of degradation ; and since its enter- 
ing into a medical prescription raises the query, 
is it necessary ? since, in short, the whole truth 
as to the use of spirit is so well understood, that 
evil example can hardly be called dangerous ; 
now it is time seriously to agitate the inquiry, 
whether it may not be banished from medicine. 
But as people are not generally aware of the 
nature of opium, of its dreadful ravages 
wherever men have acquired that taste for it, 
best acquired by often taking it as a medicine ; 
therefore no danger is to be apprehended, from 
silently introducing it to supply the place of 
spirit in medicine, lest it come to supply its 
place as the desolating scourge of our land. 

Such reasoning would hardly escape from 
men accustomed to have their arguments can- 
vassed before a jury. It may very well be com- 



92 

pared with theirs, who in an age, when the evils 
of clerical dominion have been fully discussed 
and pointed out, and in a country, all whose 
institutions are levelled against such dominion, 
are sounding an alarm against the strides of the 
clergy towards power, and against a union of 
Church and State. Or to make the parallel 
perfect, the acuteness of these alarmists should 
be united with the simplicity of the early be- 
lievers, who, in yielding all power to the clergy, 
saw only its safety from abuse in so holy hands. 
I hope^ I have rendered myself sufficiently in- 
telligible ; and that you see, how the fact as to 
the standing of the two secular professions with 
regard to the temperance cause affords no 
ground for compliment on the one hand, or for 
reproach on the other ; that it is but the devel- 
opment of one of the universal principles of 
human nature, — the principle, that however ex- 
clusive privileges may foster any science or 
subject of human thought in its infancy ; before 
it reaches its perfection these must be done 
away ; it must be stripped of mystery, left to free 
thought, free discussion, free action ; or in other 
words, it must be based on true republican prin- 
ciples ; that real republicanism is not more the 



93 

perfection of civil government, than of religion, 
and every other subject of general interest. 

I have entered upon this discussion, because 
I think it affords some suggestions, especially to 
men young in the practice of law or medicine, 
or to those about entering on professional studies, 
which suggestions I offer from the sincerest 
conviction of their importance to your welfare. 
You see, how fast the progress of temperance is 
diminishing the business of managing the litiga- 
tions, and of administering to the diseases of 
men ; while at the same time ample fields for 
the exertion of talent are opening in other direc- 
tions. We have too long talked of the three 
learned professions, as if there were no other 
worthy men of collegiate education. But as 
men, by becoming more temperate, save in the 
expenses of litigation and of sickness, they will 
become more able, and more willing, to encour- 
age talent in other directions. The expense 
saved by totally disusing ardent spirit, would 
make annually many miles of railroad and canal. 
Here is one of the most fit objects, to which to 
appropriate the money so saved. Thus a way 
is opening for the employment of a body of civil 
engineers. Is not the occupation worthy the 
attention of more of our liberally educated men ? 

9 



94 



And then again, people are waking up to the 
importance of the general extension of a more 
thorough system of education. The business of 
teaching youth has been too long made a step- 
ping stone to something else ; and it seems to 
me as if Providence were diminishing the call 
for men in two of the professions, on purpose, 
that more of our college graduates might devote 
themselves for life to the business of teaching. 

None need fear wanting employment, who 
will only throw themselves on the current of the 
times, and be up to what the spirit of the age 
demands. A few years have produced a great 
change in the clergyman's situation. He no 
longer stands on undisputed ground, able to get 
along pretty well, by composing and delivering 
his two sermons a week, and not notoriously 
violating the proprieties of his calling. He is 
obliged to keep a good look out, lest others go 
before him in a practical understanding of what 
the exigencies of the church require. He must 
find his happiness, if at all, in forgetting his 
private concerns, and identifying his desires 
with the best happiness of his people. 

A call to do the like, seems now to be made 
by the providence of God on each profession. 
If so, he who makes it, will not disappoint those 



95 

who accept it in sincerity and in truth. Perhaps 
the time is not distant, when much of the learn- 
ing, which has been acquired for the purpose of 
pleading causes, and of administering to disease, 
will be demanded for lyceums in lectures. And 
a town which should so reform its morals as to 
afford an inadequate support for its lawyer and 
its physician, we may presume would have in- 
tellectual appetite enough, and means abundant, 
to maintain a lyceum, and employ and compen- 
sate a lecturer on constitutional law and kindred 
subjects, and another on natural history and the 
means of preserving health.*. 

There are signs of the times, which indicate, 
that such suggestions are more especially deserv- 
ing the attention of young men engaged in the 
study of medicine or contemplating so to do. 
Medical writers have abundantly confessed their 
doubts, whether, after all the discoveries made 
in their art for centuries, diseases are better 
cured, than when the art was in its infancy ; 
and this question people are beginning to decide 
for themselves. The opinion is fast gaining 
ground, that if we mean to enjoy health, our 
main dependence under God must be in carry- 

* I might add, to be employed also at a fixed salary to ad- 
minister to the sickness, more or less, in a given district. 



96 

ing out the principles of the temperance refor- 
mation, in banishing from our tables their accu- 
mulated luxuries, and returning to a simple and 
moderate diet ; and in a proper attention to ex- 
ercise, clothing, and guarding against indiscreet 
exposure ; in becoming temperate in all things. 
The opinion is gaining ground, that as in other 
things the wants of nature are easily and obvi- 
ously met, and truth on subjects of general 
interest found at last to be simple and intelligi- 
ble to common capacities, so if we will return to 
a natural mode of living, our diseases will be 
such as common experience can prescribe for, 
from a knowledge of the simples of our own 
woods and fields ; and that we shall be under no 
necessity of ransacking the bowels of every land 
for drugs of dangerous character and doubtful 
operation. 

I can anticipate nothing else from the increas- 
ing notoriety of the fact familiar to all who have 
looked into medical history, that new diseases 
have been originated, and old diseases aggra- 
vated, pretty nearly in proportion as medical 
science has become refined, and as new and 
deadlier poisons have been introduced into the 
practice, till the matter found its ne plus ultra 
in the cholera. There are many striking facts 



97 

of this kind in medical history, upon which 
people are beginning to put their own construc- 
tion. For instance, there is a disease peculiarly 
the object of horror, and for which mercury is 
eminently considered as a specific. But no 
mention of that disease is found in history, till 
just about the time when mercury was intro- 
duced into medicine. I need not enlarge on 
such a fact, or suggest the importance of the 
inquiry, how far the disease has been created by 
mercury. A word to the wise is sufficient. 

There is another fact too much in point, and 
too deeply concerning all interested in the do- 
mestic relation, to allow me to refrain from 
alluding to it through a false delicacy. So far 
as I have inquired, the fact is confirmed by the 
testimony of all, who are old enough to be com- 
petent witnesses. In our country fifty or sixty 
years ago, a branch of medical practice pecu- 
liarly interesting to the fairer half of our race 
was wholly in the hands of their own sex. It 
was then comparatively easy and safe ; while it 
has become difficult and dangerous in proportion 
as it has fallen into the hands of professional 
men, and as they have refined in their art. The 
experience of the whole world coincides with 
this tale ; and I speak after careful examination, 

9 * 



98 

when I say, that a suspicion is fast spreading 
through the community, that the present melan- 
choly frequency of death and debilitated consti- 
tutions among our ladies from the sufferings 
peculiar to their sex, has been the legitimate 
result of committing so great an outrage on 
common sense and common decency, as to sup- 
pose, that the most universal of nature's opera- 
tions cannot be performed without other assist- 
ance than the delicate hands, to which it so 
appropriately belongs.* 

The opinion is thus gaining currency, that 
there is a radical fault in the present method of 
giving poisonous drugs for restoring health, im- 
planting one disease to expel another, and 
making devil cast out devil. It is beginning to 
be suspected, that this is to the body, what the 
principle always assumed by the heathen moral- 
ists was to the soul, namely, that one evil passion 
must be encouraged and strengthened, to coun- 
;eract another. And as Christianity, in opposi- 
tion to this, inculcates a few simple principles 

* God has promised, that women " shall be saved in 
child-bearing, if they continue in faith, and charity, and 
holiness, with sobriety." (1 Tim. i. 15.) Surely a want 
of these graces is too plainly indicated by the present 
state of society. 



99 

as the sole and sufficient remedy for sin and 
vice of every kind ; a like simplicity, it is sus- 
pected, will be developed in medicine ; that the 
art of treating the diseases of the body will be 
found as simple and easy, as to administer to 
the diseases of the soul ; Wash and be clean ; 
Believe and be saved ; as simple and easy, as 
administering to the ills of the body politic; 
Leave to an enlightened people the whole control 
of affairs, and away with standing army and 
established church, crown and coronet together. 
If the case be not found to be so, I do not readily 
see, how we shall free the Author of nature from 
the charge of forgetting for once the usual anal- 
ogies of his wisdom and goodness. 

It is not long since I heard the opinion 
avowed by a gentleman, who had regularly 
studied the profession of medicine, and practiced 
the art, that the strong medicines, so called, 
however they may remove disease, do it at so 
great an expense to the constitution, that it 
would be a saving of life, on the whole, to dis- 
pense with them entirely, and use no means but 
common nursing. The gentleman is well known 
to the public as a writer and popular editor : and 
if I mistake not, his opinion is so fast gaining 
currency, that at no distant period many drugs 



100 

in our apothecaries' shops will go down, to seek 
the shades of brother Alcohol, in the tomb of 
the Capulets. 

I am sensible that I have called up questions 
which some may think, might better be suffered 
to rest. I reply, there is no possibility of leaving 
them at rest; the spirit of the times is calling 
them up. I have thought it an act of kindness 
to warn those who are expecting to spend their 
lives in the practice of medicine, that the spirit 
of popular inquiry which has been overhauling 
everything else, and stripping away mystery and 
exclusive pretensions, will not long leave their 
profession at rest, on its old foundations ; it 
will subject it to the scrutiny, which has been 
applied to every other subject of general interest, 
and with such salutary effect ; for it begins to be 
considered as a law of the human mind, that no 
science will be brought to anything like perfec- 
tion, while made a mystery in the hands of a 
privileged order.* 

* In the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, for 
Sept. 17, 1834, is the following passage ; " Are tea and 
coffee injurious ? — A person who has been some twenty, 
thirty, or forty years in the habit of taking these bever- 
ages, would probably lose more than gain by abandoning 
them. — It would be a question however, whether the 
former (the milk and water drinker) would be a happier 



101 

I invite you then, young physician, medical 
student, or whoever is contemplating to study 
the science, to consider whether the indications 
of the times do not require something else, than 
going the old round of dealing out calomel and 
opium to broken down constitutions; whether 
your only hope does not lie in aiming whither 
the tendencies of the age tend, to bring people 

or more useful man; whether, in fact, he would not be a 
milk and water character." In the same work for Oct. 
5th, 1824, the following information is given for literary 
men ; " In hot weather when the system is subjected to 
the relaxing influence of continued heat, a little brandy 
and water ivith dinner will be salutary." Again (Sept. 
7th, 1824.) " By the continued heat of summer we are 
predisposed to diseases of the bowels, and these diseases 
can only be prevented, and that disposition overcome by 
a warm and bracing diet, and the occasional use of good 
old wine, or weak brandy and water." When public 
sentiment shall have become sufficiently decided for that 
conclusion in regard to the common narcotic and stimu- 
lating drinks, to which practical men are everywhere 
coining, perhaps some seventy-five physicians of Boston 
may venture upon the united declaration, that Tea and 
Coffee, as drinks, are never useful for men in health. 
Thus among the Principles of the Temperance Reforma- 
tion, I include as a most important one, the assertion of 
a right on the part of the people to go before their au- 
thorized guardians in matters of reform. Let them ac- 
cordingly beware, lest Alcohol be made a scape-goat to 
bear away the sins of all his fellows. 



102 

generally so to understand the art of preserving 
health, that it shall be seldom impaired beyond 
their own knowledge to administer the means of 
cure. 

Having had some occasion to look into medi- 
cal history, to mark the contradictory theories, 
which have risen and fallen, one before another, 
in such rapid succession, the darkness which 
broods over the subject by the confession of all ; 
I cannot but greet the growing disposition to 
regard the extension of the principles of the tem- 
perance reformation into all things as the great 
means of forestalling and resisting dyspepsy and 
other diseases. I greet it in the language of 
Milton, 'Hail, holy light, offspring of heaven first 
born.' I greet it, as a meet accompaniment of 
the operations which are tending to restore the 
jarring elements of the world, to the rule of the 
Prince of peace ; as an indication of the ap- 
proach of the time, of which it is promised, that 
" As the days of a tree shall be the days of my 
people ; " no longer like the grass of the field, 
no longer like the fading flower ; when the in- 
habitants of the land shall no more say, I am 
sick, and when the infant shall die an hundred 
years old. And as one remarkable phenomenon 
of the religious world now is, that the frequent 



103 

occurrence of premature death seems to have 
lost its tendency to affect the survivors with a 
salutary sense of their own mortality, but too 
frequently to tend to just the reverse; so as 
friends of Christianity we seem invited to wel- 
come any means, which promise to free us from 
the necessity of pronouncing so often prema- 
turely that farewell 

Which ends all earthly friendships, 
And closes every feast of love. 

If my suggestions are worth nothing, let them 
pass by. I speak as to wise men. Judge ye 
what I say. 



APPENDIX. 

Since this address has been in the hands of the 
publisher, I have read, for the first time, Spurz- 
heim on Education. A few extracts will show, 
how well some of his sentiments accord with mine. 

" Among the abuses concerning rewards and 
distinctions, I mention only the fault to give to 
regular professors the exclusive right of teaching. 
Monopoly impedes improvement in everything." 
p. 180. 

" A great step towards perfection, would be the 
full and practical admission of the principle, that 



104 

every one has the right to employ his talents to the 
utmost, for his own benefit, as far as he can 
do it without injuring others. This system of 
government is certainly superior to that of exclu- 
sive privileges of any kind." p. 182. 

" This study (Materia Medica) will not require 
great extension, if we attend more to the art of 
healing than to the display of knowledge. The 
most skillful practitioners use a small number of 
drugs in curing their patients, and they use still 
less for themselves, being indisposed." p. 202. 

"The members of the ordinary professions do 
not think it necessary to conceal, that the end and 
aim of all their exertions is selfishness. The same 
anti-social principle is visible in all worldly affairs. 
— This overwhelming flood of selfishness must 
abate, or the general happiness of mankind remain 
an impossibility." p. 271. 

If further authority of like import is wanted, the 
following may serve as a specimen out of an abun- 
dance. 

" By what unaccountable perversity in our frame 
does it appear, that we set ourselves so much 
against any thing that is new ? Can any one be- 
hold, without scorn, such droves of physicians, and 
after the space of so many hundred years experi- 
ence and practice of their predecessors, not one 
single medicine has been detected, that has the 
least force directly to prevent, to oppose, and expel 
a continued fever? Should any, by a more sedu- 
lous observation, pretend to make the least step 
towards the discovery of such remedies, their 
hatred and envy would swell against him, as a 
legion of devils as;aiflst virtue, the whole society 
will dart their malice at him, and torture him with 
all the calumnies imaginable, without sticking at 
anything that should destroy him root and branch. 



105 

For he who professes to be a reformer of the art of 
physic, must resolve to run the hazard of the martyr- 
dom of his reputation, life and estate." — Dr. Harvey. 

" As matters stand at present, it is easier to cheat 
a man out of his life than of a shilling, and almost 
impossible either to detect or punish the offender. 
Notwithstanding this, people still shut their eyes, 
and take everything upon trust that is administered 
by any pretender to medicine, without daring to 
ask a reason for any part of his conduct. Implicit 
faith, every where else the subject of ridicule, is 
still sacred here. Many of the faculty are no doubt 
worthy of all the confidence that can be reposed in 
them ; but as this can never be the character of 
every individual in any profession, it would cer- 
tainly be for the safety, as well as the honor of 
mankind, to have some check on the conduct of 
those, to whom they intrust so valuable a treasure 
as health." 

#^i Ji JA *!Z Jt Ji. *Si. 

TV *7t> 7? V^ *7t" VT* Vr 

" Very few of the valuable discoveries in medi- 
cine have been made by physicians. They have 
in general either been the effect of chance or of 
necessity, and have been usually opposed by the 
faculty, till every one else was convinced of their 
importance. An implicit faith in the opinions of 
teachers, an attachment to systems and established 
forms, and the dread of reflections, will always 
operate upon those who follow medicine as a trade. 
Few improvements are to be expected from a man, 
who might ruin his character and family, by even 
the smallest deviation from an established rule." 

" ' No argument,' continues he, # ' can be brought 

* The author of Observations on the Duties and 
Offices of a Physician, just quoted. 
10 



106 



against laying open medicine, which does not 
apply with equal, if not greater force, to religion ; 
yet experience has shown that since the laity have 
asserted their right of inquiry into these subjects, 
theology, considered as a science, has been im- 
proved, the interests of real religion have been pro- 
moted, and the clergy have become a more learned, 
a more useful, and a more respectable body of 
men, than they ever were in the days of their 
greatest power and splendor.' 

" Had other medical writers been as honest as 
this gentleman, the art had been on a very different 
footing at this day. Most of them extol the merit 
of those men, who brought Philosophy out of the 
schools, and subjected it to the rules of common 
sense. But they never consider, that Medicine, at 
present, is in nearly the same situation, that philos- 
ophy was at that time, and that it might be as 
much improved by being treated in the same man- 



" There has been much difference of opinion 
among philosophers in regard to the place, which 
medicine is entitled to hold among the physical 
sciences ; for while one has maintained, that it 
' rests upon an eternal basis, and has within it the 
power of rising to perfection,' it has been distinctly 
asserted by another, that 'almost the only resource 
of medicine, is the art of conjecturing.' ' The fol- 
lowing apologue,' says D'Alembert, ' made by a phy- 
sician, a man of wit and of philosophy, represents 
well the state of the science. " Nature," says he, 
" is fighting with disease ; a blind man armed with 
a club, i. e. the physician, comes to settle the differ- 
ence. He first tries to make peace ; when he 
cannot accomplish this, he lifts his club, and strikes 
at random ; if he strikes the disease, he kills the 



107 

disease ; if he strikes nature, he kills nature." * 
«• An eminent physician,' says the same writer, ' re- 
nouncing a practice which he had exercised for 30 
years, said, I am weary with guessing.' " — Dr. 
Abercrombie. 

"Medical science is like a temple unroofed at 
the top, and cracked at the foundation." — Dr. Rush. 

" If we take a retrospective view of the science 
of medicine, with its alterations and improvements 
in the last two centuries, the medical annals of this 
period will present us with a series of learned dis- 
sertations by authors, whose names alone are now 
remembered ; while their writings, under the spe- 
cious name of improvement, have left us only the 
deplorable consolation of knowing, that their works 
have heaped system upon system, prescript upon 
prescript, error upon error, each in turn yielding to 
its follower. Ye&r after year produces a new 
advocate for a new theory of disease, each con- 
demning its predecessor, and each alike to be con- 
demned by its successor. We wish a more rational 
mode adopted for the promotion of medical know- 
ledge, than hair-brained theories and doubtful facts. 
Observation must take the place of scholastic 
learning and hard names. We must have facts 
instead of opinions, reason instead of theory, know- 
ledge instead of titles and certificates." — JYeiv York 
Medical Inquire?; Vol. I. No. 1. 

" Wealth may purchase the honor [of a medical 
diploma], the influence of friends may secure it, or 
dogged resolution, in attending three or four courses 
of lectures, will at length weary out the patience of 
professors, and enable the veriest dunce in the 
universe to carry off the prize — it [the diploma] 



108 



amounts simply to show, that the persons who 
wear this distinguished honor, have been able to 
raise the means to attend two courses of lectures. 

" This is a fair representation of that system of 
instruction, that is pursued in every medical college 
in the United States. # * * # We appeal to 
the public to say, if it is not one of the greatest im- 
positions ever palmed upon an enlightened age ; if 
it is not perfectly inadequate to the object in view, 
and at least five centuries behind the present con- 
dition of literary improvement." — Western Journal 
of the Medical and Physical Sciences. 

" The abuses of these [the heroic] remedies, and 
the abundant use of even mild articles in endless 
combinations, too often witnessed among us, cannot 
be too openly, nor too loudly reprobated. These 
errors are disgraceful to our profession. But if 
that were all, one might be silent. They cause 
endless, and often great sufferiug to those, who 
are already afflicted enough." — Br. Jackson. 

" To a certain extent I have seen demonstrated 
the actual benefit of certain modes of treatment in 
acute diseases. But is the benefit immense ? 
When life is threatened do we often save it ? When 
a disease is destined by nature to be long, do we 
often very materially diminish it? I doubt not 
that we sometimes do under certain circumstances. 
But on the other hand, I must acknowledge, that 
what I have seen here, # of disease and its issues, 
has rather inclined me to believe, that J individually 
overvalued the utility of certain modes of treatment 
in America. 

" I believe, that we admit many things in 
America as axioms, which are very far from being 

* In Paris. « 



109 

proved. We have too long believed, that, because 
demonstration on many points was impossible in 
medicine, it was not worth while to study it like 
an exact science. 

" For shame upon us, that the antiquarian can 
spend years of toil and labor to decypher an Egyp- 
tian hieroglyphic, the naturalist a life of hardship 
and privations to ascertain minute points of no 
practical interest, and that we should pass our lives 
getting money, when, by study and devotion to what 
is intrinsically of equal interest, simply as an exer- 
cise of the human mind, we could reach such re- 
sults of essential importance, to the happiness of 
millions. 

" The reason that medicine # # # is so de- 
spised as a science is, that it has never yet been 
studied as a science. 

" Is it enough for me to know what the books 
can teach me ? They contain more falsehood than 
truth ; and I cannot distinguish between them 
without studying nature." — James Jackson, Jr., 
M.D. 

Such is medical science and medical practice, 
according to the authority of those most interested 
to make a favorable report ; such the jugglery 
played off upon fashion and legislative wisdom, 
popular ignorance and science falsely so called. 
Truly poor human wisdom seems destined to go 
the same round of folly in regard to every general 
interest, before hitting upon the right course, 
namely, the full and practical admission, that 
" equal rights should be secured to all, and exclu- 
sive privileges to none "* — that our best securities 
for rendering men faithful and efficient are, to watch 

* Governor Davis's Speech to the Legislature of Mas- 
sachusetts, January 13, 1835. 
10 * 



110 

them narrowly, to leave competition free, and to 
make interest and duty coincide. 

It is common indeed, to represent the confessed 
darkness of medical science as necessarily attached 
to the inherent difficulties of the subject ; one in- 
stance among a million, in which men charge upon 
God the consequences of their own fault, for the 
alternative is simply, whether God in constituting 
the human body, with the means of its health, has 
compelled the sons of iEsculapius to float forever 
on the dark sea of uncertainties, or whether human 
folly and wickedness have attempted to make a 
complicated and mysterious art out of what God 
had made plain and simple. 



Ill 



TRUE CHRISTIANITY TRUE RADI- 
CALISM. 

" In theorizing on the subject before us, even wise and good men 
have often mistaken first principles ; and hence the disappointment 
of their fondest hopes, hence the failure of their best endeavors to 
mitigate the evils of" society. " They have not taken man as he is, a 
fallen, depraved creature, naturally proud, indolent, evil and unthank- 
ful ; but as he should be, holy, humble, industrious, conscientiously 
disposed to do every thing in his power to" mitigate the sufferings of 
his fellows. — President Humphrey. 

Cuique in sua arte credendum* is the maxim 
of ordinary minds. It is an epitome of the con- 
servative creed. Cuique in sua arte credendum : 
how should an obscure German monk pretend 
to understand the Scriptures better than all the 
learned doctors and endowed universities of the 
church ? Cuique in sua arte credendum : 
whether God has made the sun to revolve round 
the earth, or the earth round the sun, who should 
best know, the upstart Galileo, or God's own 
vicegerent on earth — the infallible interpreter of 

* Every one to be trusted in his own trade. 



112 

his will ? Caique in sua arte credendum : how 
should a poor self-taught Genoese pilot presume 
to make discoveries to put to shame all the 
learned heads, which have gone before him ? 
Cuique in sua arte credendum : how should the 
lawyers, merchants, and yeomen of America, 
pretend to reverse the decisions of the heads of 
the mother country, born to the right, and 
trained to the art of governing ? Cuique in sua 
arte credendum : if the old institutions of Eu- 
rope require reforming, leave the work to those 
practised in the business of government ; and 
let not others be agitated by the discussion of 
matters which they do not understand. 

Such are the true principles of the conservative 
creed. Thank God, a spirit like Luther, Co- 
lumbus, or Jefferson, occasionally arises, to set 
its fundamental maxim at defiance : and in defi- 
ance of it every radical improvement and capital 
discovery has been brought about. Did I not 
know, from the record of all past history, how 
deeply rooted are conservative principles in 
human nature, how slow mankind are to learn 
the simplest practical truths, and to open their 
eyes upon the most glaring practical absurdities, 
with which they have always been familiar ; I 
should now stand in astonishment at the spec- 



113 

tacle of a people exulting in their freedom from 
the impositions of past ages, and tremblingly 
sensitive to vindicate their right, in all things to 
think and act for themselves ; yet sustaining 
two powerful interests to thrive on their own 
degradation ; and in regard to one of them es- 
pecially, acting as if it were a shame to exercise 
their own judgment, 

I would not excite ill will towards any class of 
men, as if they were governed by worse princi- 
ples than are common to man. But while I 
regard the Bible as containing the truest philos- 
ophy of human nature, and while I behold this 
philosophy verified by all history, all observation, 
and all experience ; I expect to see every ex- 
periment verify the general proposition, that, 
men acting in a body, no degree of learning and 
ingenuity, sense of honor and feeling of hu- 
manity, is sufficient to set them right, while it is 
their interest to go wrong, and while they can 
hide ignorance, inefficiency and dishonesty be- 
hind professional mystery, professional rules, and 
professional privileges. The proposition is so 
mortifying to human pride, that I do not wonder 
it has been so often practically denied ; and 
hence the results so grievously different from 
the anticipations, when human wisdom has 



114 

thought to secure the obvious advantages of the 
division of labor. 

In accordance with the forestated principle, 
if I knew, that in any state religion was treated 
as a subject too difficult for people to exercise a 
free judgment upon, but was committed exclu- 
sively to the care of priests, and the priests to 
receive their compensation in the penalties paid 
by the people for vices, and that independency 
in religion was stigmatized as heresy or schism ; 
I should expect the priests to present the most 
formidable obstacle to the improvement of the 
people in morals beyond a certain point. I 
should expect them to labor heartily to keep the 
people from sinking to the lowest depths of de- 
pravity, lest their moral sense should become so 
extinct, that they should not care to atone for 
their sins, by purchasing peace of their spiritual 
guides. I should expect them, in short, to keep 
alive just so much sensibility of conscience, as 
would best render themselves objects of blind 
veneration and most bountifully fill their coffers. 
And though the priesthood might originate in 
men of a self-sacrificing spirit, whom the confi- 
dence reposed in them would only render more 
tremblingly conscientious not to abuse that con- 
fidence ; I should still expect no different ulti- 



115 

mate result, from the temptation held out to men 
of an opposite spirit, to insinuate themselves into 
the office. All this I should so unhesitatingly 
anticipate from leaving implicitly trusted spirit- 
ual physicians to find their account in the mul- 
tiplication of spiritual disease, that I should 
hardly think it necessary to examine, whether 
the result verified the anticipation. 

If I knew that in any country, legislation very 
much, and jurisprudence altogether, fell into the 
hands of men, who lived on- the quarrels of the 
people, and the difficulties into which they fell 
from the perplexities and uncertainties of law ; 
I should not expect such men to go far ahead of 
public sentiment for reforming manners, and 
bringing about the perfection of the; social 
system : I should expect to find the " uncer- 
tainty of the law " tenfold more " glorious " than 
necessity requires. 

If I knew that in any country the people paid 
their physicians for sickness, and not for health; 
and that the physicians were a regularly organ- 
ized body, governed by their own rules ; that all 
independency in medicine was stigmatized as 
quackery ; and that the best prepared for death 
or life were afraid to die and ashamed to survive 
from a disease not treated by those supposed to 



116 

have a divine and exclusive right so to do. I 

should expect I should expect, in short, 

that where people were papists in regard to the 
body, the results would exactly correspond with 
those, which spiritual popery has everywhere so 
legitimately produced. 

So I should reason a priori. I might add, 
that when I reason in the contrary direction, all 
my observation brings me to the same conclu- 
sion. So stubborn and multiplied do the plain 
facts appear, that I should be obliged to admit 
the conclusion, however confounded by it, and 
unable to reconcile it with known laws of the 
human mind. 

But it has been objected to a part of the con- 
clusion, that though disease confessedly rages 
worse, and proves more unmanageable, than 
when medical science was in its infancy; yet 
the science has really been advanced towards 
improvement, only vicious habits of living have 
more than counteracted the advantages of im- 
proved skill. The objection, however just, 
affects not my main end. The case is as if a 
New England clergyman should visit Cuba for 
the improvement of his health, and witnessing 
the low state of morals, should remonstrate with 
one of the priests to this effect. Don't you see, 



117 

that the accumulated rites, which you have been 
adding to religion, have been worse than useless? 
People are evidently less conscientious and virtu- 
ous, than when the ordinances of religion were 
administered to them in their primitive simplicity. 
The priest admits the fact, but still insists, that 
the multiplied rites and accumulated mystery 
have had a salutary tendency, only they have 
been more than counteracted by bull-fights, con- 
cubinage, and other devices of Satan for corrupt- 
ing the people. The New Englander inquires, 
whether the priests have remonstrated against 
these satanic devices ; and finds, that they have 
indeed done so, but for the most part formally 
and officially, and as if they expected not to be 
regarded. Further investigation shows him, 
that the priests are about as often at bull-fights, 
and keep about as many concubines, as the 
people themselves. 

In neither case does the objection affect my 
main end : because I am not determining, 
whether, where conscience is seared and intel- 
lect blinded, as in most papal countries, the ac- 
cumulated rites and mysteries of religion increase 
or diminish the evil, or which way the evil is 
affected by the popular medicines, where it is 
fashionable for people to live in gross ignorance 

11 



118 

of the laws of their being. My main end is to 
expose the mischief (wherever precisely it may 
lie) of sustaining monopolies, and having people 
taxed for ignorance, rather than pay for know- 
ledge. 

But it is objected, such delusion, as here seems 
supposed, cannot be in this enlightened age— 
this age of unlimited inquiry and independent 
thought — this age of overhauling the decisions 
of other days. Not quite so fast. In this very 
vaunting of liberality, freedom, and independence, 
I see a sign that the clear day of emancipation 
from superstition and prejudice, has but half 
risen upon us : for true independence of mind, 
like true charity, " vaunteth not itself." I have 
seen in our day, something very like the account 
which Paul gives of some would-be liberals at 
Corinth. Let us attend a moment to the history 
of their case. 

Among the people converted from heathenism 
to Christianity at Corinth, different views pre- 
vailed as to the gods, which they had formerly 
worshipped. Some regarded them as evil spirits ; 
their idols as the images and representatives of 
such evil spirits : and consequently all respect 
shown to such idols, by eating meat offered to 
them, or in any other way, as an acknowledg- 



119 

ment of the divinity and dominion of such evil 
spirits, and consequently an act of rebellion 
against Jehovah. 

Others took a different view of their former 
gods : they said, that an " idol is nothing in the 
world : " that the so-called gentile gods were not 
evil spirits, but no existences — mere creatures 
of the imagination. As was very natural, they 
prided themselves on taking a more philosophical 
view of the matter, than that entertained by their 
weaker brethren, who retained a " conscience of 
the idol," or regarded the idols as representing 
real beings — demons — evil spirits. An infer- 
ence from this philosophy was, that they might 
safely eat meat offered in sacrifice to an idol, 
even in the idol's temple ; because in their 
hearts they paid no respect to false gods, believ- 
ing, that the so-called false gods were no exist- 
ences — that an idol was nothing in the world. 

They overlooked the obvious consideration, 
that however safe such conduct might be for 
themselves considered alone, it was wrongly 
laying a dangerous snare for their weaker breth- 
ren, as they regarded them, thus tempted to 
violate conscience by eating also, what they 
could only regard as meat offered to real de- 
mons. When men began thus to impose on 



120 

themselves by false reasoning — to enter upon 
forbidden ground, it was not singular, if they 
erred from Christian simplicity to an extent, 
which might seem hardly credible. At the 
worship of the heathen temples, scenes were 
acted, in reference to which Paul well says, that 
it is a shame even to speak of the things, which 
are done of them in secret : and of all places, 
Corinth was noted for such licentious abomina- 
tions. Is it possible, that in the searching times 
of apostolic preaching, any could have yielded 
to a temptation so gross ? Yes : when men 
once swerve from Christian simplicity, by listen- 
ing to the refinements of a false philosophy, the 
downward course is rapid to the very filth and 
dregs of corruption. They come to justify gross 
guilt by investing it in smooth language. Thus 
it was with some called Christians at Corinth. 
" Meats for the belly, and the belly for meats :" 
said they. (1 Cor. vi. 13.) I need not say, 
which of the appetites, and what mode of gratifi- 
cation, they meant to plead for by such language. 
The apostle's answer, which immediately fol- 
lows, sufficiently explains the meaning. 

The obscenities practised in almost all hea- 
then religions, have had their origin too, in phi- 
losophic speculations. They have been intro- 



121 

duced as apt representations of the fructifying 
powers of nature. Thus it is supposed, that the 
fable of the wounding* of Adonis, (called Tarn- 
muz in Scripture,) and the consequent grief of 
Venus, (commemorated by the women weeping 
for Tammuz,) was originally intended to repre- 
sent the sun deprived of his generating power by 
his southern declension, and the consequent sad 
appearance of nature during the winter months. 
And a modern philosopher,! speaks very con- 
temptuously of the abhorrence expressed by the 
Christian missionaries for the obscenities exhib- 
ited in the heathen riles, because these were 
first introduced as mystic representations of the 
fructifying power of the sun, and the correspond- 
ing capacities of the earth : just as if the original 
pretence were more important, than the actual 
effect of such exhibitions on the imaginations of 
man's heart, which are evil from his youth. 

Such were the circumstances of those, whom 
Paul reminded, that no temptation had taken 
them, but such as is common to man. (1 Cor. x. 
13.) He compared their case with that of the 
ancient Israelites in the wilderness, where so 
many fell under the temptations besetting them. 
— _ — ' 

* In partibus virilibus. t Dupuis. 

11 * 



122 

" Now these things," says he, " were our ex- 
amples, to the intent that we should not lust 
after evil things, as they also lusted. Neither be 
ye idolaters, as were some of them ; as it is 
written, The people sat down to eat and drink, 
and rose up to play. Neither let us commit for- 
nication, as some of them also committed, and 
fell in one day three and twenty thousand. Nei- 
ther let us tempt Christ, as some of them also 
tempted, and were destroyed of serpents. Nei- 
ther murmur ye, as some of them also murmured, 
and were destroyed of the destroyer." (v. 5 — 
10.) 

Some of the things here enumerated are obvi- 
ously temptations, which always and everywhere 
are common to man. But the idolatry here 
alluded to, the worship of the golden calf, might 
seem an exception. What temptation have we, 
and millions of others, to such an act ? The 
commonness however is to be found, not in the 
particular act, but in the principle, on which it 
was recommended. The Egyptians, among 
whom the Israelites had so long resided, were 
then regarded as the most refined and philo- 
sophic people on the earth. It was a part of 
their philosophy, that the invisible God is best 
worshipped by the aid to the imagination of some 



123 

visible representation : and none was more com- 
mon than the ox or bull, which for his strength 
and useful qualities was supposed to represent 
some of the most important attributes of the in- 
visible Deity. Thus the temptation to the Israel- 
ites to represent the God, who had brought them 
put of Egypt, under the similitude of a calf or 
bullock, was essentially a temptation to set aside 
the positive word of God, the evidence of plain 
fact, and the dictate of common sense, from def- 
erence to the speculations of those, whom the 
world admired as most wise, refined, or philo- 
sophic* 

What Paul then designates as the temptation 
anthropinos, that which is common to man, is 
just this, the temptation to swerve from a strict 
regard to what God, or conscience, the evidence 
of sense, or unprejudiced reason, dictates, from 
regard to what is fashionable among those re- 
puted great or wise in the world. The fashions 
and maxims of the world so change, that we 
cease to be tempted to the particular wrong acts, 
into which there was once the greatest danger of 

* This plain statement of the case entirely refutes the 
papists' defence of their images, that they regard them 
not as divinities, but as representations of unseen objects 
of adoration. This was precisely the idolatry contem- 
plated by God, in the second commandment. 



124 

falling. But the pride of fashion still arrays 
itself against the simple truth of God, and the 
dictates of unbiased conscience, and unsophisti- 
cated judgment : and to fear to be singular or 
unfashionable, rather than fear to go wrong — a 
foolish fear of being spoken of as having a better 
heart than head, as a well-meaning but weak- 
minded person — here is the temptation, eminently 
that which is common to man. 

It might be expressed in other words, by 
saying, it is the temptation to assume a false, at 
the sacrifice of a true independence. Or in 
other words still, we everywhere see men tempt- 
ed too successfully to strive vainly to cast off 
their dependence on God and the appearance of 
implicitly and seriously regarding his word, at 
the cost of making themselves slavishly depen- 
dent on the changeable breath of their fellow 
worms. 

What multitudes there are vaunting their 
freedom from authority in religion, who have 
never thought on the subject, so as to form an 
opinion for themselves, fearlessly, but with the 
fear of rejecting the truth; independently, but 
with the feeling that God only is worthy to be 
depended on : not afraid to embrace one truth, 
because it is so old, as to be derided as going out 



125* 

of date ; nor another, because it is so new, as 
not yet to appear, whether it is going to be pop- 
ular. And I hardly know a surer mark of the 
want of this Christian independence, than great 
quickness in men to vindicate their freedom from 
human systems — their independence to think for 
themselves. Jesus on one occasion spoke to the 
Jews of their being made free by the truth. 
They look fire at once at the suggestion, that 
they were not free, and replied, " We be Abra- 
ham's seed, and were never in bondage to any 
man ; how sayest thou then, Ye shall be made 
free 1 " (John viii. 33.) Indeed, had they 
forgotten their seventy years' bondage in Bab- 
ylon ? nay, that they were even then in bondage 
to the Romans ? Why the very fact, that they 
were not then politically free, rendered them so 
sensitive, so quick to vindicate their freedom, 
that they did not stop to reflect, whether the 
freedom spoken of by Jesus were not something 
very different from that, the want of which was 
so mortifying to their pride. We may still see 
cases very similar. If men are very quick to 
vindicate the freedom of their opinions — to assert 
their independence of thinking as others do, of 
believing a thing because it has been long or 
generally believed ; it is a pretty strong indica- 



126 

tion, that their opinions are not properly their 
own — that they are slaves to the fear of not 
being thought liberal-minded. 

If a man really feels, that there is none great 
but God — that it is He who sitteth on the circle 
of the earth, while the inhabitants thereof are 
but as grasshoppers — if thus it is his first desire, 
to believe what He declares, and to do what He 
commands, esteeming it but a very small jriatter 
to be judged of man's judgment, he will be little 
likely to boast his freedom from being ruled by 
the opinion of feeble mortals. But, if one has 
never thrown off the fear of man, so as to resolve 
in good earnest, that he will think and act, as 
accountable ultimately to God alone ; it is natu- 
ral, that a secret consciousness of the fear of 
man, of the slavish dread of being spoken of as 
illiberal or unfashionable, should render him 
quick to assert (what he is half conscious may 
be well disputed) his freedom from being subject 
to the opinion of others. 

This was just the case of the would-be liberals 
at Corinth. They made great ado about their 
emancipation from superstition to the freedom of 
Christianity. The secret was, they were very 
ambitious of being known as in advance of other 
Christians. Yet their vaunted independence 



127 

was but false. It was such a dependence on 
the popular breath, as led them to make great 
ado about their attaining to what was indeed 
but a very small matter ; and about which a 
mind truly liberal and charitable would never 
have vaunted itself; but rather have said, Have 
I faith in what I differ from my weaker brethren ? 
I will have it to myself before God. Happy is 
he, that condemneth not himself in that thing 
which he alloweth. (Rom. xiv. 22.) 

Is there any thing new under the sun ? and is 
not such indeed the temptation common to man ? 
Such thoughts have often occurred to me, from 
observing, how many, who seem not to be with- 
out regard to Christian principle, are always 
torturing themselves with the inquiry, What will 
people think or say, if I do so and so ? The 
observation has led me to regard a true Chris- 
tian independence, as one of the most desirable, 
and last attained acquisitions. By Christian in- 
dependence, I mean the settled, quiet determina- 
tion, to have a judgment and conscience of one's 
own ; to adhere thereto strictly, conscious that 
one's vindication is on high, and never disqui- 
eted with the apprehension, what will the world 
think or say of me ? 

If such independence were to be found in 



123 

proportion as it is professed; we should be an in- 
dependent people indeed. But alas ! where the 
Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty, and no 
where else is perfect freedom found. The very 
vaunting bespeaks its want. Paul has not 
rightly declared the temptation spoken of to be 
common to man, unless it is that which easily 
besets us. It becomes then each to beware, 
how easily he may persuade himself, that he is 
only disregarding needless scruples, and reject- 
ing human authority, when all the while he is 
soothing his conscience with opiates, and afraid 
manfully to avow, what he would see to be the 
truth, if he would but let conscience honestly 
utter her voice. 

Our peculiar political privileges expose us to 
some peculiar dangers from the common temp- 
tation. The freedom, with which every one 
may form and utter his opinions on all subjects, 
it must be expected, will often be abused to 
licentiousness. It will be construed as a freedom 
to make God's word speak just what the indi- 
vidual pleases, or to reject it altogether, after 
just what examination he pleases to give it. 
Many are thrown on the responsibilities of free- 
men, who really know very little, in what true 
freedom consists. Such will often be eager to 



129 

assert their freedom, by hastily denying the 
plainest declarations of God's word, and what 
wiser and better men have firmly believed. 
And while they promise themselves freedom, 
they are still servants of sin and of a guilty con- 
science, and slaves to the opinions of men. 
They are servants of sin. Consciousness of 
guilt drives them to tax their ingenuity to set 
aside what God has plainly declared. And the 
same tyranny of a guilty conscience hinders them 
from reposing quietly in their boasted liberty 
and security. Hence their artifices to conceal 
their uneasiness. Hence their loud protestations 
of their ease and confidence for the future ; 
when, if they really felt so, there would be no 
need of so loudly proclaiming it. Hence, in 
proportion as a guilty conscience creates a hell 
within, men are eager to run after every one, 
who comes to repeat the old story of no hell to 
be feared hereafter : when, if conscience were 
really quiet, the stale report would not be thought 
worth running after. 

They who thus understand not, that 

He is the freeman, whom the truth makes free, 
And all are slaves beside, 

are slaves to the opinion of men. Just because 
12 



130 

they have not met God on his own terms, settled 
their account, made their peace with him, and 
acceded to the terms, on which they are to meet 
him in judgment ; just for this reason, they 
cannot esteem it a very small matter to be judged 
of man's judgment : and accordingly their fear 
of man keeps them back from pursuing seriously 
the inquiry, how they are to make their calling 
and election sure, and from seeking truth, 
wherever it is to be found. 

My countrymen, will you thus live, and move, 
and have your being, in the breath of your fel- 
low creatures of yesterday ? Shall the descend- 
ants of them, who left their homes to cross an 
ocean and subdue a wilderness, rather than 
submit their faith to the established creed — of 
them, who took up arms at the risk of estate 
and life, rather than submit to a paltry tax from 
a foreign power — shall men so descended, so 
belie their descent, as to suppress or give up 
their own sober convictions to their equals, who, 
for aught you know, have never sought the 
truth with such intensity of desire, as to deserve 
a moment's regard ? Will you not so declare 
your independence of men, as to consider your 
salvation of body and soul, as too important a 
matter to be reached by the fear of their sneers 



131 

or reproaches ; so that you will quietly refer the 
vindication of the reasonableness of your conduct 
to the last tribunal, like one determined to stand 
or fall to his own master ? This must be your 
course, if you would stand in that judgment at 
the last. Nay this must be your course, if you 
would enjoy here the consciousness, that your 
peace is not at the mercy of every changing 
breath. 

Modern liberalism (I speak not of the intents 
of individuals) seems to me to be founded in the 
desire to repel the charge, that " the carnal mind 
is enmity against God " — " deceitful above all 
things, and desperately wicked," and charge 
back upon* God the blame of human guilt and 
human sufferings. To this end men say and 
unsay ; torture scripture and common sense ; 
resolve abounding wickedness into the peculiar 
impositions of priestcraft — into the blasting in- 
fluence of false religion — into the unavoidable 
imperfection of human nature, which cannot fail 
of the kind allowance of our heavenly Father ; 
which is just a softer way of saying, God will 
acknowledge himself to have s6 constituted us, 
that we inevitably commit a quantum of sin, for 
which he cannot exact a strict account, without 
forfeiting his character as a kind father — that so 



132 

far he must acknowledge sin to be no sin, or 
that its blame rests upon himself. 

Thus too God has a controversy with men, as 
to the many contradictory interpretations and 
perversions of his word. He insists, that the 
fault is not in himself; that he has revealed his 
will plainly, so that the way-faring man, though 
inexpert, need not err in the way — written so 
conspicuously, that he may run who reads ; that 
his testimony "is sure, making wise the simple ; 
that what is hidden from the wise and prudent, 
is revealed unto babes in simplicity of desire to 
learn ; that if any man will do his will, he shall 
know of the doctrine ; but if men mistake it, it 
is because, though the light shines upon the 
darkness, the darkness admits it not, but men 
choose darkness rather than light, because their 
deeds are evil. 

But we find men everywhere flatly contradict- 
ing all this, and throwing back upon God, the 
blame, which he charges upon them. They 
charge him with having written his word so 
obscurely, that the honest inquirer has no secu- 
rity against the grossest error in interpreting it. 
Such is the foundation of the papal pretence of 
the necessity of an infallible interpreter, and the 
surrender of private judgment. And such pre- 



133 

cisely is the foundation of modern liberalism ; as 
if God, in professing to give us a clear revelation, 
had proposed a riddle so obscure, that we must 
not consider a perverse interpretation of it as an 
indication of a corrupt heart. I cannot purchase 
the credit of liberality at the cost of admitting in 
effect such a charge against my Maker, which 
he so fully repels. Indeed, tried by pure reason, 
it seems to me the most unreasonable of preten- 
sions. 

But when men reason thus in regard to the 
soul's concerns, it is natural that they should 
follow the same analogy in regard to the body ; 
that they should resolve the contraction of the 
average period of human life to less than one 
half of three score years and ten, and the fright- 
ful aggravation of disease, into the unavoidable 
frailty of our bodily structure, and the necessary 
difficulty of arriving at truth as to the prevention 
and treatment of disease ; rather than admit, 
that God has made very plain and simple the 
means of fulfilling the number of our days — too 
plain and simple for corrupt human pride, which 
would live on the blind veneration of an ignorant 
and debased multitude. So consistent is our 
present physical degradation, and the prevalence 
of unsound minds from unsound bodies, and the 

12 * 



134 

senseless medical superstition which binds so 
fast most minds among us, with that liberality 
w T hich would relieve man of his consciousness of 
guilt, and pretend to consult his true dignity by 
repelling God's charge of " deceitful above all 
things and desperately wicked," and defying his 
curse pronounced against him that trusteth in 
man. Awful is the curse we have incurred, by 
endeavoring to make out, that it applies only to 
man perverted by false religion, or by some 
other circumstances betrayed into guilt not com- 
mon to man. 

I do not wonder, that the world is so slow to 
admit the conclusions I am urging, while I see 
everywhere such a desperate effort to evade the 
fundamental principle. This principle is the 
indispensable foundation of true charity ; not 
modern charity, but that which Paul preached 
and exemplified. He has sufficiently explained 
why, little as he found of satisfaction in the 
world, and much as he encountered of groveling 
selfishness and ungrateful opposition from those 
whose best welfare he was fervently seeking, he 
always looked upon the wickedness of men with 
" a countenance more in sorrow than in anger." 
The world was crucified unto him, and he unto 
the world, not by the disappointment of his early 



135 

calculations on human virtue and worldly happi- 
ness, but by the cross of Christ. (Gal. vi. 14.) 
He judged, that, if one died for all, then were 
all dead ; and that he died, that they who live, 
should henceforth live, not unto themselves, but 
unto him that died for them and rose again. 
(2 Cor. v. 14, 15.) These passages make the 
whole matter plain. The mode of man's re- 
demption had taught him to expect to find men 
everywhere dead in trespasses and sins, at en- 
mity with God, and opposed to the most benevo- 
lent efforts for their own welfare. He had found 
himself to be no exception to the general rule : 
but though he seemed once to have some real 
acquiescence in God's character and law, yet 
when the perfection of that character and law 
were revealed clearly to his conscience, he found 
his mistake — that he had been unconscious of 
enmity against God, only because God had been 
so wrongly apprehended ; that he had always 
harbored latent propensities to all manner of 
concupiscence, waiting only a clear view of the 
purity of God's law, to rouse themselves into 
action: when this discovery was made, the latent 
sin revived in its full power — rose up in positive 
enmity against God, as an active controling re- 
ality. (Rom. vii. 8, 9. viii. 7.) Thus was laid 



136 

the foundation of Paul's charity and forbearance 
towards the faults of others. The mode of man's 
redemption, and his acquaintance with his own 
heart, had taught him to expect to find men 
everywhere and in all circumstances acting just 
as he found them : therefore he was not disap- 
pointed, nor his temper soured and himself ren- 
dered misanthropic. 

We see accordingly, that if men take a differ- 
ent view of human nature, when their attention 
becomes riveted upon one form of wickedness, or 
when their party spirit is raised against it, they 
are much more merciless in their denunciations 
than the Christian, who enters thoroughly into 
Paul's views. And many who admit into their 
creed, expressed however strongly in general 
terms, the confession, that universally the heart 
of man is deceitful above all things and desper- 
ately wicked, still reluct obstinately against fully 
admitting the same as a sober reality. Thus 
the denunciations against the unparalleled wick- 
edness of slave-holding, or any other form of de- 
pravity, are founded in a deep-rooted determina- 
tion to get rid of admitting, that we must soberly 
calculate on finding unrenewed men in all cir- 
cumstances at enmity with God, and of course 
at enmity with the best welfare of his creation. 



137 

In the fashionable habit too, of courting the 
praise of liberality, by speaking soft words of 
popery, I see much to account, why the commu- 
nity is so disposed to go on in the admission of 
papistical principles in regard to the body. 

As a remedy for existing evils, next to that 
greatest and best of remedies, which the gospel 
brings to every heart which heartily receives it, 
I repeat, that "we must abolish all monopolies 
and mysteries, make the interest and duty of all 
classes coincide, and have people pay for know- 
ledge rather than be taxed for ignorance." I 
do not say, into precisely what form these prin- 
ciples should be carried out. One, as that to 
which we must -ultimately arrive, suggests itself 
to me, that the whole community be divided into 
associations, each about the size of a common 
parish, to employ and compensate its physician, 
with a fixed salary, to lecture on the means of 
preserving health, and administer to all its sick- 
ness : and its lawyer likewise, to attend on the 
same terms to all the business within his depart- 
ment. It is not extravagant to say, that in such 
a state of things, sickness would soon be dimin- 
ished to one twentieth its present amount, human 
life prolonged again to the average duration of 
three score years and ten, and nineteen twen- 



138 

tieths of the now litigated cases settled in a 
private way. 

But if this condition cannot be brought about 
at once, there are steps, which we can take 
towards it. We need not by our votes give the 
legal profession so large a representation in our 
legislative assemblies, so beyond its relative im- 
portance in the community. We may for the 
most part keep out of courts of justice, and leave 
the dependents thereof alone to their honorable 
business. Public sentiment may exact, that the 
lawyer's fees shall not depend on the length to 
which he can protract a case — that the fee shall 
be settled by agreement with his client before- 
hand, to depend on success, if the client so 
exacts. In medicine, if we cannot at once 
establish the habit of paying for health, and not 
for sickness, we can demand the immediate 
repeal of all laws* recognizing a monopoly and 
exclusive privileges : or we can practically 
nullify such laws, by showing, that we will not 
submit to our legislators, what medicine we will 
take, or what class of physicians employ, more 

* This whole volume, (except the Appeal to the legal 
profession,) was written before the extra-session of the 
legislature of Massachusetts, in 1835. A few sentences 
are less fully applicable, than they have been here, and 
are still in many of the States. 



139 

than we will submit to them, what creed we 
shall believe, or what church attend ; that we 
mean to have every practitioner estimated, as 
he can satisfy people of his success in curing, 
without the slightest regard, whether he is dig- 
nified M. D. or not. All the arguments for 
such laws, are so exactly parallel to what have 
been used in almost every country for an estab- 
lished church, and for legislation against heresy 
and schism, and so fully refuted here, that to 
indicate the comparison is a sufficient refuta- 
tion.* 

I am earnest on this point, because, next to 
the blessing of that liberty found only where the 
Spirit of the Lord is, I thank God most heartily 
for my emancipation from medical superstition ; 
that I dare use my own eyes to mark the effects 

* " The condition of a minister is not such as is stated 
to exist in America, where, as we are assured by a well 
known and credible minister of that country, ' no min- 
ister of any Protestant denomination, to my knowledge, 
has ever received a sufficient living two years in succes- 
sion.' " — Dr. Dealtry's charge, quoted Christian Observer, 
May, 1835. 

The American minister referred to, is doubtless Mr. 
Flint, who asserts thus much in regard to the western 
States. The extension of his remark to the whole 
country, was but a moderate stretching for achurch-and- 
state advocate. 



140 

of medical practice ; arid despise the cry quack- 
ery or empiricism, when used to frighten people 
into obedience, and to sustain the credit of the 
old monopoly, as heartily as I do the cry heresy 
or illiberality, when used to deter from free in- 
quiry, or a free expression of opinion in religion. 
There is very manifest a restlessness in the 
community at present ; a deep conviction, that 
the social system is far behind its perfection ; a 
disposition to distrust every thing old, and to try 
every thing new, a groaning and travailing in 
pain together, as if people were half conscious 
of a glorious liberty of the children of God, to 
which they may fairly aspire, and fully conscious 
of their immense distance from yet reaching it. 
In such circumstances, I see immense danger of 
a general rising to sweep away everything old 
and venerated indiscriminately. To prevent 
such a catastrophe precisely, I have ventured to 
give these my thoughts to the public, in which I 
have attempted to point out, to the best of my 
ability, where the great evil lies, and to invite 
all to a cordial co-operation for its correction. 
I believe there is good sense and generosity 
enough in the people, to give each profession a 
fair opportunity yet to correct its own evils ; but 
if this opportunity is not soon and heartily era* 



141 

braced, I expect to see the people arise in their 
strength, to take the correction into their own 
hands. I write, not to urge them to this. That 
were unnecessary, for the event is inevitable 
according to the present course of things. But 
I write, to urge upon those most interested, to 
avert the danger by removing the just causes of 
complaint : or, if they will not take warning, 
that the people may be better instructed, where 
precisely lies the cause of their grievances, and 
the impediments to the progress of social im- 
provement, that they may not assail rooted habits 
and old institutions indiscriminately. 

I am sensible that there is a melancholy 
aspect to the considerations I have presented. 
Melancholy indeed it is, to see men everywhere 
leagued together to counteract the benevolent 
designs of their Creator towards themselves. 
But the view I have taken seems to me the most 
cheering and animating which can be taken in 
the face of obvious facts. If it sets man very 
low, it vindicates the conduct and word of God. 
It shows, that our errors and sufferings are not 
because He made our best welfare either for this 
life or the life to come, so difficult to be found ; 
but that men have obstinately and inexcusably 
set themselves against the rules of living pre- 

13 



142 

scribed in his word, and against the warnings not 
to trust our interests to human disinterestedness, 
perpetually there inculcated, and in his provi- 
dence also. It shows too that we may anticipate 
speedily a vast improvement of the social system, 
without trusting to human virtue to bring it 
about ; that the simple spirit of republicanism, 
modified only by that degree of disinterested 
Christian benevolence which may be fairly cal- 
culated on, will inevitably bring about the glori- 
ous result, and evince, in a stronger sense than 
has generally been apprehended, that vox populi 
is indeed vox Dei, May we then repeat the 
maxim, not as hitherto too generally, to magnify 
our own achievements, but to ascribe the king- 
dom, the power, and the glory, where they are 
most justly due ; and to ask, with more wonder- 
ing admiration, What have we that we have not 
received ? and, Who hath made us to differ? 

I know, that very different anticipations as to 
the ultimate issue of things are entertained by 
many, in view of some obvious tendencies to dis- 
organization, to abusing liberty to licentiousness. 
I cannot but consider these things as incident 
to our present transition state from an im- 
perfect to a perfect degree of liberty, rather 
than as evils to be perfected, when republican 



143 

principles shall have become fully recognized. 
As Paul declares, that " where the Spirit of the 
Lord is, there is liberty ;" (2 Cor. iii. 17.) so I 
believe, that where liberty is — where the shackels 
of aristocratic habits and superstition are com- 
pletely thrown off — there will be the Spirit of the 
Lord ; there Christianity in its simplicity will 
be most cordially received ; there men will divest 
themselves of false delicacy in regard to religion, 
which, like false delicacy in other things, is 
most powerful in a transition state ; there people 
will dare really to think for themselves on relig- 
ion, instead of being beguiled by the name of so 
doing. Where they do so, as conscious of being 
left to stand or fall to their own Master, they are 
in the readiest way to find that the service of 
God is perfect freedom ; the uncaviling reception 
of his declarations, the best cultivation of the 
intellect ; and the casting of their crowns at his 
feet, their highest exaltation. 

I believe we have reached the lowest point of 
physical degradation ; that the present general 
move among people, to inquire how health is to 
be preserved and life prolonged, will speedily 
issue in results parallel to the strengthened and 
cultivated intellects everywhere raised up, when 
after the stupor of ages, people resolved to in- 



144 

quire for themselves into the means of their 
spiritual health. 

We must indeed calculate on not finding the 
frailty of man and the shortness and uncertainty 
of life, so fertile a topic of exhortation, as has 
hitherto been. But already, how has it ceased 
to move ! How generally has it been confessed, 
that in the prevalence of the cholera, or other 
epidemic, instead of learning wisdom from judg- 
ments abroad in the earth, men have rather said 
practically, Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow 
we die ! Now my philosophy of Body and Soul 
leads me to attribute this insensibility to the lan- 
guage of Providence and to the declarations of 
revelation, these intellects debased to sense and 
dead to things unseen, very much to physical 
causes — to the abominations, with which human 
stomachs are treated under the names of food 
and medicine. I anticipate indeed a prolonga- 
tion of human life to the patriarchal, if not to the 
antediluvian age : but not a return of antedilu- 
vian wickedness ; because the means, by which 
life is to be prolonged, coincide with the self- 
denying spirit of Christianity. They who expect 
the result simply from a reform in medicine, or 
that medical skill at its best estate is to do much 
towards lengthening life, will inevitably find 



145 

themselves mistaken. Yet this is evidently the 
expectation of the reckless portion of the com- 
munity — the partizans of infidelity and sensuality. 
Very different were the rules of living, upon the 
observance of which God promised to the ancient 
Israelites, " He shall bless thy bread, and thy 
water ; and I will take away sickness from the 
midst of thee. There shall nothing cast their 
young, or be barren, in thy land ; the number 
of thy days (70 years) I will fulfil." (Ex. xxiii. 
25, 26.) Indeed I need not the authority of 
revelation to satisfy me, that such a mode of 
living, as Moses prescribed, is the only sure 
means of securing such results. 

As the line between them who mean to serve 
the Lord in body, soul and spirit, and them who 
mean to live to themselves, is becoming more 
and more distinct, I am not sure that the final 
extirpation of wickedness from the earth will 
not be brought about by a still increasing de- 
votion to appetite, with a corresponding depend- 
ence on the stimulating process of repairing for 
a time the constitution, till the race of the 
wicked become extinct through want of physical 
ability for its own continuance. We are not 
like the antediluvians, with the power of abusing 
constitutions fitted to run a thousand years. 

13 * 



146 

Hard and self-denying is the process of getting 
back to any thing nigh where we were. The 
wisdom learned by this process will be a strong 
guarantee against a return to the sins, which 
have brought us where we are. 

Thus we might reason, independent of God's 
express promise, that the time, when in conse- 
quence of ceasing to eat swine's flesh, and to 
practise kindred abominations, (Isa. lxv. 4.) the 
days of his people shall be prolonged to the age 
of a tree, (v. 22.) shall be a time of correspond- 
ing spiritual prosperity. u And it shall come to 
pass, that before they call I will answer ; and 
while they are yet speaking, I will hear. The 
wolf and the lamb shall feed together^ and the 
lion shall eat straw like the bullock : and dust 
shall be the serpent's meat. They shall not 
hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, saith 
the Lord." (vs. 24, 25.) 

In the increasing sense of our shameful phys- 
ical degradation, and the spreading resolution to 
know and remove the cause, I see one of the 
surest indications, that " the night is far spent," 
and " the day is at hand." (Rom. xiii. 12.) I 
see such an indication in the present groaning 
and travailing in pain together, as under a bond- 
age to be borne no longer. The increasing 



147 

light of that day must shame men out of the arti- 
fices, at present so often employed, to conceal their 
life-long bondage through fear of death. It will 
not require the full blaze of day, to make it very 
clear, that many betray their subjection to such 
bondage, by the levity, or by the assurance, with 
which they assert their freedom from it. 

Reader, are you one of those, who profess to 
have ascertained, that the world of wo is only a 
bugbear fit to frighten children, and for doting 
insanity to rave about ? Are the fears of a com- 
ing judgment the frequent subject of your jest 
over your cups, or in the merry circle ? Now 
have a care, lest as the intellects of men clear 
from the clouds arising from abused stomachs, 
you betray to them more than you would wil- 
lingly confess : lest it appear too plainly, that 
you are jesting away your fears. 

Suppose you were about sending a boy by 
night on an errand through some lonely path, 
that led by a building which popular supersti- 
tion regarded as a haunted house. You lecture 
him on the folly of such notions, and exhort him 
to fear nothing. He promises fairly, and sets 
out. Now, as he draws near the fearful place, 
he begins to whistle ; and, as he draws nearer 
still, to jest about goblins and ghosts. Well 



148 

you see through all this. He is resolved to have 
enough of the man not to run like a coward ; 
but yet cannot summon fortitude enough to 
pass on in quiet dignity. He must use some 
artifice to keep up his courage. He is whistling 
away his fears. 

I have seen very similar conduct in persons of 
a larger growth, who were children in religious 
knowledge. I have witnessed a sporting with 
the fear of death and the judgment to follow, 
very inconsistent for men, who had dispassion- 
ately and deliberately found that fear to be 
groundless, but which bore a very strong resem- 
blance to the conduct of the boy jesting away 
his fears. Have a care, I repeat, lest, while you 
laugh at the fears entertained by others of the 
punishments of a life to come, you do not let out 
the secret, that you are laughing up your own 
courage— that you are laughing away your own 
fears. 

If a portion of your neighbors should be seized 
with such an insanity, as to be continually dis- 
quieted by spectres floating before their eyes, 
the creation of their own imagination, in conse- 
quence of which they were never secure to 
follow their business quietly, or to taste undis- 
turbed any of the enjoyments of life; would it be 



149 

characteristic of the sound mind to make a jest 
of the imaginary miseries, that others were suf- 
fering ? Would you not rather suspect, that he 
who could thus sport with the pitiable delusion 
of his fellows, was either sadly wanting in hu- 
manity, or that his own mind began to be in- 
fected with the common delusion, and that he 
was making his utmost effort to laugh himself 
out of it ? 

Let me then assure you, who affect to laugh 
at the fear of a coming judgment, that, however 
unseemly the subject be for mirth, while you 
profess to regard such fear as groundless, I feel 
a sort of satisfaction in seeing you make it a 
subject of derision. I take it as an indication, 
that you are not sincere — that your conscience 
is not so seared, as you would have it believed — 
that you cannot set the justice of God at defi- 
ance so quietly, as you profess — that your fears 
will come in spite of you — and that you would 
not be so inhuman, as to deride or reproach 
others for tormenting themselves with the fear 
of what may follow after death, if you did not 
find it necessary to adopt this poor artifice, to 
conceal your fears from yourself, and from others 
too ; like the boy, who jests about goblins in the 
dark, to keep up his courage — to jest away his 
fears. 



150 

One thing is yet wanting to render the suppo- 
sition I have made parallel with your case. 
None less resemble the men tormented with im- 
aginary spectres, none look forward with less 
trembling apprehensions, than the Christians, 
whom you imagine so bound and tormented by 
the fear of hell. If they are deluded, it is a de- 
lusion of bright images — a halo around the nar- 
row house, so that no longer to their apprehen- 
sion do 

Darkness, death, and long despair, 
Reign in eternal silence there. 

Your mode of reasoning is such, as seems to 
me, no intellect could admit, but from sympathy 
with a sadly maltreated stomach. I therefore 
look to physical improvement as the great and 
effectual means of exposing its inconclusiveness. 

The indications, that the long night of super- 
stition and ignorance, of mental, moral, and 
physical degradation is far spent, and that day 
in its best sense is at hand, should serve to all 
as a powerful incitement, to cast away the works 
of darkness, and to put on the armor of light. 
The day promised is such as shall try men's 
souls — try them beyond the trial, to which they 
have been put by the former great developments 



151 

of republican principles. In the very want of 
faith, now prevalent, to apprehend the promises 
of the final reign of truth and righteousness on 

O CD 

the earth, I seem to see a sign of the Son of 
man's speedy coming. (Lukexviii. 8.) If they 
who are essentially prepared for his coming, 
need to be aroused from their sleep, to prepare 
to welcome him, how shall fare the remaining 
multitude yet dead in trespasses and sins ? And 
what voice shall effectually warn them to meet 
him, who is like a refiner's fire, and like fuller's 
soap ? If the amount of temptation common to 
man has hitherto proved sufficient to entice the 
many into the broad way that leadeth to destruc- 
tion, and to leave to the few the narrow way 
that leadeth unto life ; how shall it be in the 
last great trial preparatory to the final establish- 
ment of the Son of God in his kingdom upon 
earth ? 

Reader, I would fain add a word to beat you 
off from the old cavil, that your heavenly Father 
will surely provide, that so many of his creatures 
shall not be lost by trials, which himself had 
ordained with full fore-knowledge of the result. 
I would fain show you, that this plea not only 
contradicts his express word, but really charges 
the guilt of your sins upon him. I have endeav- 



152 

ored to convict you of carrying on a controversy 
with your Maker in regard to the life that now 
is, of being deluded by fashion into using the 
engines of death as the means of life — all in 
defiance of the plain word of God, and the evi- 
dence of your own eyes. The conviction I 
should little value, unless it lead you to inquire, 
whether it be not even so for the life that is to 
come. 

Do not inquire why God does not force the 
soul's salvation upon you, any more than the 
health of the body, in despite of your negligence, 
or your efforts to destroy both. You may see 
the reason fully, if landed at last on the Rock of 
ages, you look back on these temptations and 
dangers, and around on the ruins of a world, 
with feelings akin to those, with which the mar- 
iner, hardly escaped from shipwreck, climbs the 
ocean's bank, and turning sees his fellows still 
laboring hopelessly beneath the tempest. And 
the painful spectacle is not without its pleasure : 
not that he delights in the calamity of others ; 
but because the sight gives him a keener appre- 
hension of his own security. That similar may 
be the feelings, with which every reader shall 
survey the last great wreck, is the fervent prayer 
of the writer. 



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